MIMICRY IN PLANTS. 
of species to species, either in the general habit, or in the 
development of some particular organ, the leaf or the fruit, 
such as I have attempted to describe and to represent in the 
illustrations. No conjunction of external circumstances will 
avail to account for these, whether acting through Natural 
Selection or any other known process. 
The theory of Protective Resemblance, so seductive an ex- 
planation of similar phenomena in the animal kingdom, is 
also entirely inapplicable here ; it is, in fact, more completely 
inadequate than either of the others. The only manner in 
which it seems possible to conceive that a species of the vege- 
table kingdom can benefit by resembling another species, is by 
presenting so close an imitation of its flowers, in appearance or 
odour, that it may thereby deceive insects that would otherwise 
pass it by into visiting it, and thus bringing about the neces- 
sary distribution of the pollen. But if such mimicry, where 
there is no genetic affinity, ever occurs in the flower, it is 
extremely rare. The only instance of such apparent imitation 
that occurs to me is in the case of the Bee Orchis, and perhaps 
one or two of its allies ; and here the mimicry is not of another 
flower, but of the insect itself. It might well be assumed 
that the extraordinary resemblance of the flower of this singular 
plant to the body of a bee was designed to attract these insects 
to the flower ; but, unhappily for this theory, the Bee Orchis 
appears to be one of the comparatively small number of plants 
that are independent of insect agency for the maturing of their 
seeds. Mr. Darwin, who has closely watched the plant, has 
never seen a bee or other insect alight upon its labellum ; and 
both he and other observers state that the construction of 
the pollinia seems especially contrived to secure self-fertiliza- 
tion, in contrast to the provisions of the larger number of 
species belonging to the order. The special specific resem- 
blances, on the other hand, which I have described, are chiefly 
in the foliage, the fruit, and the general habit, from which it 
is difficult to conceive any profit to arise to the species. In 
many cases also the resemblance occurs between plants which 
are natives of countries belonging to entirely different phyto- 
geographical regions, which can never have come into contact 
with one another. It is just possible that we have a curious 
instance of protective, or rather of beneficial resemblance in 
scent, in the case of the carrion-like odour of the flowers of 
Stajpelia , which attracts blue-bottle and other flies that may 
assist in the distribution of the pollen. 
We seem then, in attempting to discover some explanation 
of these phenomena, to be forced back to a view of the opera- 
tions of Nature which has been too much lost sight of by 
modern naturalists. Darwin and Wallace’s theory of Natural 
