40 
THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 
through the sweet bond of perfume and nectar, and in the sole 
hope of posterity. 
To take one of our own wild species. Here is the Arethiisa 
hnlbosa of Linnaeus, for instance. Its pollen must reach its 
stigma — so he supposed — in order for the flower to become fruit- 
ful. But this is clearly impossible, as the pollen never leaves its 
tightly-closed box unless removed by outside aid, which aid must 
slso be required to place it upon the stigma. This problem, which 
confronted him in practically every orchid he met, Linnaeus, nor 
none of his contemporaries, nor indeed his followers for many 
years, ever solved. Not until the time of Christian Conrad 
Sprengel (1735) did this and other similar riddles begin to be 
tieared up, that distinguished observer having been the first to 
discover in the honey-sipping insect the key to the omnipresent 
mystery. Many flowers, he discovered, wtre so constructed or 
so planned that their pollen could not reach their stigmas, as pre- 
viously believed. The insect, according to Sprengel, enjoyed the 
anomalous distinction of having been called in, in the emergency, 
to fulfill this apparent default in the plain intentions of nature, as 
shown in the flower. Attracted by the color and fragrance of 
the blossom, with their implied invitation to the assured feast of 
nectar, the insect visited the flower, and thus became dusted 
with the pollen, and in creeping or flying out from it conveyed the 
fecundating grains to the receptive stigma, which they could not 
otherwise reach. Such was Sprengel' s belief, which he endeav- 
ored to substantiate in an exhaustive volume containing the result 
of his observations pursuant to this theory. — Exchange. 
EXTRACTING PERFUMES FROM FLOWERS. 
When flowers are gathered for their perfume, no time must be 
lost in fixing their fleeting perfume. Flowers are gathered early 
in the morning, before the sun is high in the heavens. They are 
then taken into the factory and spread upon the sterilized fat, 
which has the faculty of extracting the scent. This is done again 
and again, until the fragrance of as many as twelve pounds of 
flowers is fixed in one pound of fat. The fat, thus charged with 
