THE ORCHIDS OF NEW ENGLAND. III 
access to the nectary except from the front. A short bristle, 
slid along the base of the lip and into the nectary for some 
distance, will not touch the viscid discs, they lying a little too 
far back; but on pushing it down deep into the long and 
curving spur (only the lower half or quarter of which is filled 
with nectar) it has to be bowed back somewhat, when it 
catches the disc; so that before an insect can have drained the 
nectary. the poilen-masses will be affixed to the base or upper 
part of its proboscis, or to the forehead of a smaller insect. 
When extricated, the movement of depression is prompt— 
within a few seconds—and on re-application, the pollen is 
accurately brought into contact with the stigma. The anther- 
cells are widely separated but little divergent, their tapering 
bases (supported as in A. lacera), project strongly, the discs 
looking forward and downward. In both ZH. psycodes and H. 
lacera the nectar appears to be much more plentiful in the 
spurs of older flowers than of freshly opened ones, most 
so indeed in blossoms which had their pollen removed and 
their stigma fertilized several days before, and which were 
becoming effete. In such flowers the spur was often half full 
in the present species, and sometimes almost full in A. lacera. 
But although little had dripped down to the bottom of the 
spur in freshly opened blossoms, the walls were moistened with 
nectar throughout its length.” 
The botanist quoted when C. spectabile was spoken of, gives 
in the same paper some observations made at different times 
during the month of August. “A Sesza,* began to suck nectar 
(from a plant of A. psycodes), poised on the wing. It visited 
more than a dozen flowers, proceeding spirally up the spike, 
and I found about thirty pollinia attached to its proboscis 
near the base. They were all ina space of less than a tenth 
of an inchin length and much crowded. Those nearest the 
tip of the proboscis had lost much of their pollen by contact 
* S. Thysbe, Fabr. 
