rove as rudimentary as that of
Monacanthus relatively to Catasetum, I think I could easily perceive it
even in dried specimens when well soaked.

I have picked a little out of Lecoq, but it is awful tedious hunting.

Bates is getting on with his natural history travels in one volume.
(609/4. H.W. Bates, the "Naturalist on the Amazons," 1863. See Volume
I., Letters 123, 148, also "Life and Letters," Volume II., page 381.) I
have read the first chapter in MS., and I think it will be an excellent
book and very well written; he argues, in a good and new way to me,
that tropical climate has very little direct relation to the gorgeous
colouring of insects (though of course he admits the tropics have a far
greater number of beautiful insects) by taking all the few genera common
to Britain and Amazonia, and he finds that the species proper to the
latter are not at all more beautiful. I wonder how this is in species of
the same restricted genera of plants.

If you can remember it, thank Bentham for getting my Primula paper
printed so quickly. I do enjoy getting a subject off one's hands
completely.

I have now got dimorphism in structure in eight natural orders just like
Primula. Asa Gray sent me dried flowers of a capital case in Amsinkia
spectabilis, one of the Boragineae. I suppose you do not chance to have
the plant alive at Kew.

LETTER 610. TO A.G. MORE. Down, June 7th, 1862.

If you are well and have leisure, will you kindly give me one bit of
information: Does Ophrys arachnites occur in the Isle of Wight? or do
the intermediate forms, which are said to connect abroad this species
and the bee-orchis, ever there occur?

Some facts have led me to suspect that it might just be possible, though
improbable in the highest degree, that the bee [orchis] might be the
self-fertilising form of O. arachnites, which requires insects' aid,
something [in the same way] as we have self-fertilising flowers of
the violet and others requiring insects. I know the case is widely
different, as the bee is borne on a separate plant and is incomparably
commoner. This would remove the great anomaly of the bee being a
perpetual self-fertiliser. Certain Malpighiaceae for years produce only
one of the two forms. What has set my head going on this is receiving
to-day a bee having one alone of the best marked characters of O.
arachnites. (610/1. Ophrys arachnites is probably more nearly allied to
O. aranifera than to O. apifera. For a case som