The Newtown bee., 1895-03-15

perfume. Then he became wrapped lin the study of flowers and discovered their relations to insects. He was now ready to challenge the conclusions of Linnaeus. He said: If Nature intended that this pollen shall be shaken, why should it be put where it cannot reach the stigma? It is the insect which accomplishes this mystery. But his exultation was shorI- lived; he was confronted with sposers' as radical as those which he had pre- sented to Linnaeus. He came so close to the truth and just missed it. His book was consigned to oblivion, where it would have remained to this day had not Dar- win come upon the scene to reconcile all those conflicting theories. When Dar- win makes the insect fly from one flower to another he discovers cross-fertiliza- tin. We wonder that Sprengel could not have seen this.
 To illustrate what natural selection could do in the development of species by cross fertilization, MT Gibson showed what man had done to alter the pigeon by artificial selection of sports of nature. It is by such small variations which meet want that species are developed. The first flower which he took for illus. tration was the monkshood. As soon as it opens the anthers are ready to shed their pollen. Nothing can touch the stigma. This flower has adapted itself to one insect, the bumhle bee. It's tongue is just long enough to reach the stamens. His body comes in contact with the yellow pollen which he carries off with him. When he comes to a flower next day the anthers have droop- ed and the stigmas have grown and comes forward. He sips as before and the pollen touches the stigma and the flower is cross fertilized. This was beautifully illusti a5ed by the chart, as was also the process with lily adapted only to the wasp. A model of the in- sect was fitted into the flower to show how wonderfully Nature had planned for botanist to take a new flower and tell to what insect it is adapted. Sup pose he finds a flower with slender tube two inches long; what insect can reach the nectar; what insect has a tongue two inches long? The sphinx moth. The flower is the honeysuckle. In flowers that open only by night, such as the night blooming catch-f1y, all day insects, like the bees, are eliminated at once. The working of the model to show this was peculiarly ingenious and beautiful.
 Most flowers can perpetuate them
 
 insect comes along, but the orchids are a curious exception. They must have cross fertilization, then it was objected to Darwin's theory that an orchid had been found with a tube II inches deep and slender as knitting needle, and that no insect had tongue II inches long, he answered confidently that the existence of the flower proved the exis- tence of an insect with tongue II inches long, and sure enough, two of his disciples visited that country and found moth with tongue Il inches long. The orchid in conservatory is a curiosity, but only In Nature do we see it's full beauty and significance. In 8 conservatory it blooms for weeks, be- cause it is a stranger in strange land, while if it had been cross-fertilized it would wither at once. It waits seem, ingly in anticipation, and withers in disappointment upon it's stem. One sometimes thinks that there is conscious. ness there, hope unfulfilled.