THE ORCHIDS OF NEW ENGLAND. 77 
what narrower than the sepals and alternating with them. 
Representing the first circle of stamens were two, instead of 
one, fleshy dilatated triangular bodies occupying the normal 
position, that is alternating with the petals. They resembled 
in thickness and in general shape the one in the normal flower, 
and were also spotted like it, but were somewhat smaller and 
not bent, but erect or nearly so. The second staminal circle 
consisted of three fully developed stamens inserted on the 
column opposite the petals and closely resembling those of the 
normal flower in structure, except that coalescence with the style 
(the part of the pistil that bears the stigma) was less complete, 
and the connective or projection at the back of the anther was 
rather more distinct. The stigma was very nearly equally 
three-lobed, and the lobes were conspicuous and arranged alter- 
nately with the stamens. The column was but slightly bent, 
the ovary scarcely twisted, and the flower was but slightly bent 
toone side. Here, in a genus affording some of the most strik- 
ingly irregular flowers in nature, was a flower all but regular, 
and unsymmetrical only in not possessing even a vestige of the 
third stamen of the first staminal circle. This specimen tends 
to establish the conclusion, if regarded as an instance of rever- 
sion to an ancestral type, that the large, fleshy dilatated trian- 
gular organ of the ordinary flower is the rudiment of a stamen 
belonging to the outer staminal circle. No doubt the organ orig- 
inated by the disappearance of the anther and the broadening 
and thickening of the filament and its extension, the connective. 
In fact, in the monstrosity under consideration, the fertile sta- 
mens were, when viewed from the back, very much like minia- 
tures of the two rudiments of the outer circle. 
“ The missing stamen of the outer circle had left no trace be- 
hind, and there was no evidence, either from difference in size or 
difference in venation of the petals, that it had become confluent 
with one of them. It would seem probable that the lip, if it is 
a compound organ at all, is made up merely of the lower petal 
