654 
THE PRINCIPLES OF BOTANY. 
vated forms, which are not only interesting from their form, 
size, and colouring, hut many of them have a most bewitch- 
ing fragrance. Irregular as the flowers of orchids are, they 
are yet composed of a calyx of three parts, or sepals , and a 
corolla of a like number of petals ; but the variations in 
these parts, and especially in the lower or lip of the coralla, 
are ever startling one with some unexpected surprise ; thus, as 
says Professor Lindley, “ Orchids are remarkable for the 
unusual figure of their irregular flowers, which sometimes 
represent an insect, sometimes a helmet with the visor up, 
and are so various in form that there is scarcely a common 
reptile or insect to which some of them have not been 
likened.” 
Whether these out-of-the-way forms of flowers have con- 
tributed to enhance any superstitious feeling with regard to 
orchids it would be difficult to say ; hut certain it is that, 
small as is the list of our native species, yet many of them 
are popularly viewed with a feeling almost amounting to 
fear. Thus, every country child attracted by the showy 
“ long purple,” Orchis mascula , is sure to pluck it, and yet 
whoever saw it forming part of a cottage nosegay ! The 
primrose and cowslip are treasured in the cottage window, or 
find a place on the table, but the orchis seldom comes nearer 
the dwelling than the last stile before reaching it. Our 
rustics teach their children that orchises are “ bloody man’s 
fingers,” doubtless taking the notion from the white palmate 
roots of some of the species, so like dead and withered fingers 
that both themselves and children are afraid to have them in 
the house. 
The long purple Orchis mascula is also called dead men’s 
fingers in the midland counties of Gloucester and Warwick, 
a circumstance alluded to by Shakespeare in the following 
strain : 
“ Therewith fantastic garlands did she make, 
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples, 
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name, 
But our cold maids do dead men’s fingers call them ; 
Then on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds 
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke, 
When down her weedy trophies, and herself, 
Bell in the weeping brook.” 
Full of interest as are the orchids to the cultivator and the 
student of vegetable physiology, varied as they are in obvious 
properties, it is yet curious that none of their species find a 
place in the f Pharmacopoeia,’ and even Pereira, in his most 
comprehensive ‘ Materia Medica,’ only mentions two products 
