low the bitter pill. Have you looked at any this year?")...

I wrote yesterday to thank you for the Epipactis. For the chance of your
liking to look at what I have found: take a recently opened flower, drag
gently up the stigmatic surface almost any object (the side of a hooked
needle), and you will find the cap of the hemispherical rostellum comes
off with a touch, and being viscid on under-surface, clings to needle,
and as pollen-masses are already attached to the back of rostellum, the
needle drags out much pollen. But to do this, the curiously projecting
and fleshy summits of anther-cases must at some time be pushed back
slightly. Now when an insect's head gets into the flower, when the flap
of the labellum has closed by its elasticity, the insect would naturally
creep out by the back-side of the flower. And mark when the insect flies
to another flower with the pollen-masses adhering to it, if the flap of
labellum did not easily open and allow free ingress to the insect, it
would surely rub off the pollen on the upper petals, and so not leave
it on stigma. It is to know whether I have rightly interpreted the
structure of this whole flower that I am so curious to see how insects
act. Small insects, I daresay, would crawl in and out and do nothing. I
hope that I shall not have wearied you with these details.

If you would like to see a pretty and curious little sight, look
to Orchis pyramidalis, and you will see that the sticky glands are
congenitally united into a saddle-shaped organ. Remove this under
microscope by pincers applied to foot-stalk of pollen-mass, and look
quickly at the spontaneous movement of the saddle-shaped organs and see
how beautifully adapted to seize proboscis of moth.

LETTER 597. TO J.D. HOOKER December 4th [1860].

Many thanks about Apocynum and Meyen.

The latter I want about some strange movements in cells of Drosera,
which Meyen alone seems to have observed. (597/1. No observations of
Meyen are mentioned in "Insectivorous Plants.") It is very curious, but
Trecul disbelieves that Drosera really clasps flies! I should very much
wish to talk over Drosera with you. I did chloroform it, and the leaves
which were already expanded did not recover thirty seconds of exposure
for three days. I used the expression weight for the bit of hair which
caused movement and weighed 1/78000 of a grain; but I do not believe it
is weight, and what it is, I cannot after many experiments conjecture.
(597/2