Page:Darwin - The various contrivances by which orchids are fertilized by insects (1877).djvu/22

 modified forms in the vegetable kingdom, I have thought that the facts to be given might lead some observers to look more curiously into the habits of our several native species. An examination of their many beautiful contrivances will exalt the whole vegetable kingdom in most persons' estimation. I fear, however, that the necessary details are too minute and complex for any one who has not a strong taste for Natural History. This treatise affords me also an opportunity of attempting to show that the study of organic beings may be as interesting to an observer who is fully convinced that the structure of each is due to secondary laws, as to one who views every trifling detail of structure as the result of the direct interposition of the Creator.

I must premise that Christian Konrad Sprengel, in his curious and valuable work, 'Das entdeckte Geheimniss der Natur,' published in 1793, gave an excellent outline of the action of the several parts in the genus Orchis; for he well knew the position of the stigma, and he discovered that insects were necessary to remove the pollen-masses. But he overlooked many curious contrivances,—a consequence, apparently, of his belief that the stigma generally receives pollen from the same flower. Sprengel, likewise, has partially described the structure of Epipactis; but in the case of Listera he entirely misunderstood the remarkable phenomena characteristic of that genus, which has been well described by Dr. Hooker in the 'Philosophical Trans-