on on its individual stalk-like ovary, its
slender nectary, its carefully concealed pollen--all are anticipations
of an insect complement, a long-tongued night-moth perhaps, with whose
life its own is mysteriously linked through the sweet bond of perfume
and nectar, and in the sole hope of posterity.

And the flower had been stolen from its haunt while its consort slept,
and had awakened in a glazed prison--doubtless sufficiently comfortable,
save for the absence of that one indispensable counterpart, towards whom
we behold in the blossom's very being the embodied expression of
welcome.

Blooming day after day in anticipation of his coming, and week after
week still hoping against hope, we see the flower fade upon its stalk,
and with what one might verily believe to be evidences of
disconsolation, were it not that the ultra-scientist objects to such a
sentimental assumption with regard to a flower, which is unfortunate
enough to show no sign of nerves or gray matter in its composition. Who
shall claim to _know_ his orchid who knows not its insect sponsor?

To take one of our own wild species. Here is the _Arethusa bulbosa_ of
Linnaeus, for instance. Its pollen must reach its stigma--so he
supposed--in order for the flower to become fruitful. But this is
clearly impossible, as the pollen never leaves its tightly closed box
unless removed by outside aid, which aid must also be required to place
it upon the stigma. This problem, which confronted him in practically
every orchid he met, Linnaeus, nor none of his contemporaries, nor indeed
his followers for many years, ever solved.

Not until the time of Christian Conrad Sprengel (1735) did this and
other similar riddles begin to be cleared up, that distinguished
observer having been the first to discover in the honey-sipping insect
the key to the omnipresent mystery. Many flowers, he discovered, were so
constructed or so planned that their pollen could _not_ reach their own
stigmas, as previously believed. The insect, according to Sprengel,
enjoyed the anomalous distinction of having been called in, in the
emergency, to fulfil this apparent default in the plain intentions of
nature, as shown in the flower. Attracted by the color and fragrance of
the blossom, with their implied invitation to the assured feast of
nectar, the insect visited the flower, and thus became dusted with the
pollen, and in creeping or flying out from it conveyed the fecundating
grains to the recept