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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
(as represented • in ct), inviting the visits of insects. But as 
soon as the pollination of the stigma has been effected, the 
pedicel bends sharply downwards just beneath the ovary, so as to 
bring the flower into a pendent position ; and by the time the 
insects have escaped, laden with pollen, the standard-like lip, £, 
of the calyx bends over so as to close up the orifice (as seen in 
-6), and prevent any further incursions. The relative position 
of the reproductive organs would seem to render self-fertilisa- 
tion impossible in this flower ; and as many as six or eight flies 
have been found imprisoned at one time in the globular cavity 
of the calyx. 
The position of a bee when sucking the honey from a 
flower with a tubular corolla is well shown in fig. 4, copied 
from Sprengel’s u Entdeckte Greheimniss der Natur,” repre- 
senting a flower of Stccchys sylvatica so visited. It was in 
fact the very instance here depicted which led Sprengel to the 
discovery that in “ dichogamous ” flowers, where the reproduc- 
tive organs are not mature simultaneously, these organs occupy 
successively nearly the same position in the flower at the period 
of maturity of each, so that the very same part of an insect’s 
body which rubs the pollen out of the anthers of one flower 
comes into contact with the stigma of another flower. Well 
might Sprengel exclaim, when the general truth of this law 7 first 
began to dawn upon him, u Who must not admire the perfec- 
tion of the structure, both of this flower and of this bee ! Who 
cannot perceive that the Creator has adapted each one for 
the other, and has so constructed them that each supplies the 
need of the other ! ” Readers of Darwin’s w 7 ork on the Ferti- 
lisation of Orchids will recollect that from the extraordinary 
length of spur of that remarkable orchid Angrcecum sesquipe- 
dale he draws the conclusion that Madagascar, its native 
•country, must be the home of moths with a proboscis capable of 
extension to a length of between ten and eleven inches, for which 
purpose only could a spur be provided of such enormous 
length. A very short time since, Dr. Fritz Muller vindicated 
the sagacity of our great naturalist by sending home from 
Brazil the proboscis of a moth * captured in the province Sta. 
Catharina, of precisely that length. 
The mode in w 7 hich bees obtain the honey from flowers has 
been a subject of much controversy among naturalists. Swam- 
merdamm, two centuries ago, erroneously described the tongue 
as a hollow tube, perforated at the extremity. This error 
was detected by subsequent observers, who taught — also erro- 
neously — that the tongue of bees is merely a licking and not a 
sucking organ. This is indeed the teaching of most modem 
Drawn in u Nature/' vol. viii. p. 223. 
