The intelligence of the flowers Author:Maurice Maeterlinck Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: comes when all its apparatus is ready to work. XVIII This is the basis of the system of fertilization adopted by the Orchid of our climes. But each species... more », every family modifies and improves the details in accordance with its particular experience, psychology and convenience. The Orchis or Anacamptis pyramidalis, for instance, which is one of the most intelligent, has added to its lower lip or labellum two little ridges which guide the proboscis of the insect to the nectar and compel her to accom- plish exactly what is expected of her. Darwin very justly compares this ingen- 1 lous accessory with the little instrument for guiding a thread into the fine eye of a needle. Here is another interesting improvement: the two little balls that carry the pollen-stalks and soak in the stoup are replaced by a single viscid disc, shaped like a saddle. If, following the road to be taken by the insect's proboscis, we insert the point of a needle or a bristle into the flower, we very plainly perceive the advantages of this simpler and more practical arrangement. As soon as the bristle touches the stoup, the latteris ruptured in a symmetrical line and uncovers the saddle- formed disc, which at once becomes attached to the bristle. Withdraw the bristle smartly and you will just have time to catch the pretty action of the saddle, which, seated on the bristle or needle, curls its two flaps inwards, so as to embrace closely the object that sup- portsit. The purpose of this movement is to strengthen the adhesive power of the saddle and, above all, to ensure with greater precision than in the Orchis latifolia the indispensable divergence of the pollen- stalks. As soon as the saddle has curled round thebristle and as the pollen- stalks planted in it, drawn apart by its contraction, are forced t...« less