AND CROSS-FERTILIZE THEIR FLOWERS. 
29 
down into the flower so as to press gently upon these disks for a moment ; then 
withdraw it : the disks will stick fast, and the stalks with the pollen-mass be 
drawn out of the anther. Now the tip of the Anger or the pencil is just in 
the position which the head of the large butterfly or moth would occupy when 
its proboscis is thrust deep into the honey-tube. In draining the nectar from 
the tube the insect’s head is brought down close to its orifice, its large projecting 
eye on one side or the other, or on both at once, is pressed against the sticky but- 
ton ; and when the moth raises its head and departs, it carries away bodily one 
or both of the pollen-masses. With these the next flowers visited may be ferti- 
lized. 
58. Except by the insect’s aid as a carrier, secured by this most elaborate and 
wonderful contrivance, these Orchis flowers could never be fertilized. Close as 
the pollen is to the stigma, it evidently cannot reach it by any ordinary chance. 
And it would appear as if the obstacles were not effectually overcome even when 
a moth or butterfly is so ingeniously employed to convey the pollen from one blos- 
som to another, which is plainly what is intended. For the position of parts is 
such that w T hen the pollen-masses are extracted by the moth’s head, they will 
stand pointing upwards and forwards, as shown in Fig. 20. The stalk is too stiff 
to allow them to subside by their own weight. So when the moth alights upon 
the next flower and thrusts its proboscis down its honey-tube, the pollen-masses it 
has brought would hit the anther, quite above the stigma, and effect nothing. 
But all this is accurately provided for. As may be seen by watching the pollen- 
masses when taken upon the point of a pencil, within from ten to thirty seconds 
their stalk turns downward, as if upon a joint between it and the adhering disk, 
bringing them into a position like that represented by a front view in Fig. 21. 
Now the pollen-masses will accurately strike the stigma ! 
59. In some Orchises, and where this adjustment is needful, the pollen-masses 
on the insect’s head not only turn downwards but converge inwards, always in the 
way and to the degree necessary for their striking the stigma. In the larger 
Green Orchises, from which the illustrations are drawn, the sticky disk is almost 
parallel with the stalk of the pollen-mass at its lower end, and attached to it by a 
short intermediate joint, as shown in Fig. 18, and more magnified in Fig. 19. It 
is nearly the same in the Yellow and the White Fringed Orchises, which flower 
later in the season. In all these the disks face partly inwards, at considerable 
distance apart, and are stuck to the eye of the butterfly that visits them. In 
