LHE ORCHIDS OF NEW ENGLAND. IIS 
from which somewhat of the structure and size of the insect 
adapted to the work in hand may be estimated.” 
These two Habenarias have curious white ear-shaped append- 
ages on the outside of the anther, small in size but so strongly 
contrasted in A. czlzarzs with the yellow of the anther as to be 
conspicuous; and if the reader has a good herbarium to turn 
to, he will probably notice that these little auricles are visible 
without a glass, in both species, and have kept their color after 
the other parts have turned brown. I can find no printed allu- 
sion to them; even Gray’s Manual, which carefully mentions the 
strange club-shaped processes in HY. tridentata, being silent on 
this point. Professor Gray writes me that he has noticed these 
“crests,” as he calls them, but does not think they correspond 
to the fertile stamens in Cypripedium. Is not the answer to 
this pretty riddle hidden away somewhere in the following 
passage from Darwin? 
“ Although the two anthers a, and a, of the inner whorl 
(see Fig. 2) are not fully and normally developed in any Orchid, 
excepting Cypripedium, their rudiments are generally present 
and are often utilized; for they often form the membranous 
sides of the cup-like clinandrum on the summit of the column. 
These rudiments thus aid their fertile brother anther. In the 
young flower-bud of Malaxis paludosa the close resemblance be- 
tween the two membranes of the clinandrum and the fertile 
anther in shape and texture was most striking; it was impos- 
sible to doubt that in these two membranes we had two rudi- 
mentary anthers. In Lzparis pendula and some other species, 
these two rudimentary anthers form not only the clinandrum, 
but likewise wings, which project on each side of the entrance 
into the stigmatic cavity, and serve as guides for the insertion 
of the pollen masses. . 
“Tn nearly all the members of the Ophree and Neottee two 
small papille, or auricles as they have often been called, stand 
in exactly the position which the anthers a, and a, would have 
