this journey in their old age after their days of procreation are 
past. 
The sweet flag, or Calamus root, from which baby toothing 
things are made, also belongs to this family. In Europe, where 
it has been introduced, it never sets seed, due either to the ab- 
sence of its American insect pollinators or to its self-sterile 
condition, it being claimed that all the European plants were 
propagated by division from one original plant. To this group also 
belongs the cousin of the so-called black calla, the Titan-flowered 
Amorphophallus with flowers nearly three feet wide and almost 
six feet long— a huge, dirty, yellow purplish cornucopia or flagon, 
from the depths of which the carrion odor permeates the dark 
Sumatran swamps for long distances, and in which the carrion 
flies buzz away in full contentment. This is probably the plant 
that has given rise to numerous superstitions of a flower with 
poisonous exhalations deadly to goats or dogs tied near it over- 
night and in the loathsome depths of which innumerable small 
birds and bats meet their end. 
Plants of other families than the arums also possess fetid 
odors of various types. For example, Arnold’s Rafflesia, a plant 
wholly parasitic on relatives of our grapes, producing a flower 
about 3 feet across, scents the Sumatran jungles with its loud 
perfume. On the South African deserts, the Stapelias, relatives 
of the milk-weeds, send forth their invitations to the numerous 
carrion loving flies. In America the many members of the Birth- 
wort or Dutchman’s Pipe family also perform in this manner. 
The flowers of these plants bear more or less resemblance to the 
huge pipes the Germans smoke, and in Central America, there is 
one species with flowers so large that children use them in play 
for caps. Their vile smell in some species attracts troupes of 
little midges which alight on the conveniently provided platform 
and journey through a long, dark, narrow passage way in search 
of that which to them smells so enticing. And they, like the 
midges of the arums, find themselves imprisoned, for the passage 
way is lined with inward pointing hairs, through which escape is 
impossible. But again, as in the arums, the chamber is warm 
and the food is plentiful. On the second or third day of their 
imorisonment, the stamens shed their pollen on the chamber 
floor and the restless insects feast upon and cover themselves 
with it, whereupon the hairs wither and they creep out, to enter 
another flower, which is ready to brush the pollen from their 
bodies with its sticky pistils. 
In Australia, in the desert scrub, grows a low flowering shrub 
that some botanists suspect is cross-pollinated, not by an insect, 
nor by the wind, nor by birds, nor even by snails, but by that weird 
relic of the ancient past when the highest strata of animal society 
carried its young about papoose fashion — in other words, the 
kangaroo. You would not have been more surprised if I had said 
turtle or fish, would you? This strange plant has its flowers 
grouped around a cup, into which is secreted or dropped, not 
11 
