Page:Darwin - The various contrivances by which orchids are fertilized by insects (1877).djvu/76

56 that the flowers resembled bees in order to deter their visits, but this seems extremely improbable. The flowers with their pink sepals do not resemble any British bee, and it is probably true, as I have heard it said, that the plant received its name merely from the hairy labellum being somewhat like the abdomen of a humble-bee. We see how fanciful many of the names are,—one species being called the Lizard and another the Frog Orchis. The resemblance of O. muscifera to a fly is very much closer than that of O. apifera to a bee; and yet the fertilisation of the former absolutely depends on and is effected by the means of insects.

All the foregoing observations relate to England, but Mr. Moggridge made similar ones on the Bee Ophrys in Northern Italy and Southern France, as did Treviranus in Germany, and. Dr. Hooker in Morocco. We may therefore conclude,—from the pollinia spontaneously falling on the stigma—from the co-related structure of all the parts for this purpose—and from almost all the flowers producing seed-capsules—that this plant has been specially adapted for self-fertilisation. But there is another side to the case.

When an object is pushed against one of the pouches of the rostellum, the lip is depressed, and the large viscid disc adheres firmly to it; and when the object is removed, so is the pollinium, but perhaps not quite so readily as in the other species of Ophrys. Even after the pollen-masses have naturally fallen out of their cells on to the stigma, their removal can sometimes be thus effected. As soon as the disc is