alt with in the
Orchid book. This is especially the case in regard to flower morphology.
The scope of flower morphology cannot be more clearly and better
expressed than by these words: "He will see how curiously a flower may
be moulded out of many separate organs--how perfect the cohesion of
primordially distinct parts may become,--how organs may be used for
purposes widely different from their proper function,--how other organs
may be entirely suppressed, or leave mere useless emblems of their
former existence." ("Fertilisation of Orchids", page 289.)

In attempting, from this point of view, to refer the floral structure
of orchids to their original form, Darwin employed a much more thorough
method than that of Robert Brown and others. The result of this was the
production of a considerable literature, especially in France, along
the lines suggested by Darwin's work. This is the so-called anatomical
method, which seeks to draw conclusions as to the morphology of the
flower from the course of the vascular bundles in the several parts. (He
wrote in one of his letters, "... the destiny of the whole human race is
as nothing to the course of vessels of orchids" ("More Letters", Vol.
II. page 275.) Although the interpretation of the orchid flower given
by Darwin has not proved satisfactory in one particular point--the
composition of the labellum--the general results have received universal
assent, namely "that all Orchids owe what they have in common to descent
from some monocotyledonous plant, which, like so many other plants of
the same division, possessed fifteen organs arranged alternately three
within three in five whorls." ("Fertilisation of Orchids" (1st edition),
page 307.) The alterations which their original form has undergone have
persisted so far as they were found to be of use.

We see also that the remarkable adaptations of which we have given some
examples are directed towards cross-fertilisation. In only a few of
the orchids investigated by Darwin--other similar cases have since been
described--was self-fertilisation found to occur regularly or usually.
The former is the case in the Bee Ophrys (Ophrys apifera), the mechanism
of which greatly surprised Darwin. He once remarked to a friend that one
of the things that made him wish to live a few thousand years was his
desire to see the extinction of the Bee Ophrys, an end to which he
believed its self-fertilising habit was leading. ("Life and Letters",
Vol. III