geometrical pattern of lines and curves. It is obviously an ingenious
contrivance devised for some special purpose. That purpose we now
know to be the attraction of insects, who in sucking the orchid's
honey will unconsciously carry on their wings or backs the flower's
pollen to fertilise another orchid. Though whether the insect in the
long centuries by probing at the orchid has forced it to adapt itself to
it, or whether the flower has forced the insect to adapt itself to the
flower, or whether--as seems most likely--a process of mutual
adaptation has been going on century by century, and the flower and
insect have been gradually adapting themselves to one another, is
still a matter of discussion among naturalists.

We cannot gather an orchid of any kind without marvelling at its
intricate construction. And when we are looking at the orchid in its
natural surroundings in the forest itself and see the enormous
numbers and the immense variety, in size and form and habits, of
the insects around the orchid, and think how the orchid has to select
its own particular species of insect and cater for that, and the insect
among all the flowers has to select the particular species of orchid;
and how the insect, whether butterfly or bee or moth or gnat or ant,
or any other of the numerous kinds of insect, and the orchid have to
adapt themselves to each other--we see how marvellous the mutual
adaptation of flower to insect and insect to flower must have been.
We see how the particular species of orchid must have chosen the
particular species of bee, and the particular species of bee that
particular species of orchid, and the bee and orchid set themselves to
adapt themselves to one another, the orchid using all the devices of
colour, scent, sweetness of honey, to attract the insect, and gradually
shaping itself so that the insect can better reach the honey, and the
insect lengthening its proboscis and otherwise adapting itself so that
it can better secure what it wants. And we see how perfectly--how
nearly perfectly--the flower is designed for its purpose.

But what is perhaps most remarkable of all about an orchid is that
this marvel of colour and form and of texture of fabric unfolds itself
from within a most ungainly, unsightly, unlikely-looking tuber.
From shapeless, colourless tubers, which attach themselves to trunks
and branches of trees and cling on to rocks, there emerge these
peerless aristocrats of the flower-world, f