30 
HOW PLANTS EMPLOY INSECTS TO WORK FOR THEM, 
others the disks are borne directly upon the end of the stalk, are generally closer 
together, and get applied to the front of the head, or sometimes to the proboscis 
of the insect. 
60. When a pollen-mass, thus carried on the head of an insect, is brought into 
contact with the stigma, some of the pollen will cleave to its glutinous surface 
and be left there, the little threads that bind it to the stalk giving way ; another 
portion will be left upon the stigma of the next flower visited, perhaps on the next 
also, and so nearly all the pollen be turned to good account. Sometimes the ad- 
hesion of the disk to the insect’s eye is less strong than the threads that bind the 
grains to the stalk on the one hand, and than the adhesion to the stigma on the 
other. Then the whole pollen-mass is left upon the stigma of that flower, and its 
pollen taken in turn, to be exchanged for that of the next flower ; and so on. In 
any case each blossom will be fertilized by the pollen of some other blossom, 
which is the end in view ; and a more ingenious contrivance for the purpose can- 
not be imagined. 
61. The student should see all these curious things with his or her own eyes, in 
order fully to comprehend and enjoy them. Once understood in our common wild 
Orchises, it will be equally interesting to find out how it is done, in more or less 
different and varied ways 
62. In other Orchids, — whether wild ones, such as Ladies’ Tresses, Calopogon, 
etc., or in those various and more gorgeous ones, mostly air-plants of tropical re- 
gions, which adorn rich conservatories. Some of these curiously resemble butter- 
flies themselves, — either a swarm of them, as some of the smaller ones in a clus- 
ter on a long light stalk, fluttering with every breath of air ; some are like a large, 
single, gorgeous, orange and spotted butterfly : Oncidium Papilio , for example 
(Fig. 22), which takes its name from the singular likeness, Papilio being Latin for 
butterfly ; and Phalcenopsis , a plant of which, greatly reduced in size, is represented 
on the vignette title-page (upper right-hand corner), with large white flowers, 
takes its name from its resemblance to a moth. Can the likeness be a sort of 
decoy to allure the very kinds of insect that are wanted for fertilizing these same 
flowers'? Sometimes the strange shapes are not like insects; the flowers of 
Stanhopea tigrina , for example (figured at the top of the vignette title-page), 
resembling in color and form rather the head of a cuttle-fish than any known 
insect. 
63. In Lady’s-Slipper, or Cypripedium, the plan for securing fertilization is so dif- 
