W. Hamilton Gibson

“ Thus we see the four successive steps in progressive knowledge, from Grew in 1682, Linnæus, 1735, Sprengel, 1787, to Darwin, 1857-1858, and realize with astonishment that it has taken over one hundred and seventy-five years for humanity to learn this apparently simple lesson, which for untold centuries has been noised abroad on the murmuring wings of every bee in the meadow, and demonstrated in almost every flower. ”

“ The barberry, in similar vein, lays mischievous hold of the tongue of its sipping bee, and I fancy, in his early acquaintance, before he has learned its ways, gives him more of a welcome than he had bargained for. The evening primrose, with outstretched filaments, hangs a golden necklace about the welcome murmuring noctuid, while the various orchids excel in the ingenuity of their salutations. Here is one which presents a pair of tiny clubs to the sphinx-moth at its threshold, gluing them to its bulging eyes. ”

“ Here are two bees, a fly, and a beetle, each hanging dead by its legs from a flower, an extreme sacrificial penalty, which is singularly frequent, but which was certainly not exacted nor contemplated in the design of the flower. A careful search among almost any good-sized cluster of milkweeds will show us many such prisoners. As in all flowers, the pollen of the milkweed blossom must come in contact with its stigma before fruition is possible. ”

“ Our milkweed flower is a deeply planned contrivance to insure such an end. It fills the air with enticing fragrance. Its nectaries are stored with sweets, and I fancy each opening bud keenly alert with conscious solicitude for its affinity. Though many other flowers manage imperfectly to perpetuate their kind in the default of insect intervention, the milkweed, like most of the orchids, is helpless and incapable of such resource. ”

“ Considering how rarely we see the cow-bird in our walks, her merciless ubiquity is astonishing. It occasionally happens that almost every nest I meet in a day's walk will show the ominous speckled egg. In a single stroll in the country I have removed eight of these foreboding tokens of misery. Only last summer I discovered the nest of a wood-sparrow in a hazel-bush, my attention being attracted thither by the parent bird bearing food in her beak. ”

“ There is a robin's nest close by one window, a vireo's nest on a forked dogwood within touch of the porch, and continual reminders of similar snuggeries of indigo-bird, chat, and oriole within close limits, to say nothing of an ants' nest not far off, whose proximity is soon manifest as you sit in the grass—and immediately get up again. ”

“ What a catechism to one who knows that each and all represent an affinity to some insect, towards whose vital companionship the flower has been adapting itself through the ages, looking to its own more certain perpetuation! ”

“ 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 Linnæus, 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, Linnæus, nor none of his contemporaries, nor indeed his followers for many years, ever solved. ”

“ And what is an orchid? How are we to know that this blossom which we plucked is an orchid? The average reader will exclaim, "Because it is an air-plant"—the essential requisite, it would seem, in the popular mind. Of over 3000 known species of orchids, it is true a great majority are air-plants, or epiphytes—growing upon trees and other plants, obtaining their sustenance from the air, and not truly parasitic; but of the fifty-odd native species of the northeastern United States, not one is of this character, all growing in the ground, like other plants. ”

“ Every one is familiar with the curious construction of this flower, with its ten radiating stamens, each with its anther snugly tucked away in a pouch at the rim of its saucer-shaped corolla. Thus they appear in the freshly opened flower, and thus will they remain and wither if the flower is brought indoors and placed in a vase upon our mantel. Why? Because the hope of the blossom's life is not fulfilled in these artificial conditions; its natural counterpart, the insect, has failed to respond to its summons. ”

“ One by one the swarm sought their original haunt, settling on the bramble, and I now noticed that only in occasional instances did the insects seek the flowers, the attraction seeming to be confined to the leaves. I stole up softly for a nearer point of observation, and could now distinctly see the beautiful yellow and black open wings of the swallow-tail softly gliding or gently fluttering as it hung from the edge of a leaf, while it explored its surface with its uncoiled capillary tongue. ”

“ And thus we might proceed through all the orchid genera, each new device, though based upon one of the foregoing plans, affording its new surprise in its special modification in adaptation to its insect sponsor—all these various shapes, folds of petals, positions, colors, the size, length, and thickness of nectary, the relative positions of pollen and stigma, embodying an expression of welcome to the insect with which its life is so marvellously linked. ”

“ Next to the floral orchids, the mechanism of our milkweed blossom is perhaps the most complex and remarkable, and illustrates as perfectly as any of the orchid examples given in Darwin's noble work the absolute divine intention of the dependence of a plant species upon the visits of an insect. ”

“ And thus the American cow-bird outcuckoos the cuckoo as an "attendant on the spring," taking her pick among the nurseries of featherdom, now victimizing the oriole by a brief sojourn in the swinging hammock in the elm, here stopping a moment to leave her charge to the care of an indigo-bird, to-morrow creeping through the grass to the secreted nest of the Maryland yellow-throat, or Wilson's thrush, or chewink. ”

“ Even the tiny egg of a butterfly has its ichneumon parasite, a microscopic wasp, which lays its own egg within the larger one, which ultimately hatches a wasp instead of the baby caterpillar.
But who ever heard of anything but good luck falling to the lot of cow-bird or cuckoo, except as its blighting course is occasionally arrested by the outraged human? They always find a feathered nest. ”

“ In the Arethusa, it is true, the butterfly or moth might sip at the throat of the flower, but the long tongues of these insects might permit the nectary to be drained without bringing their bodies in contact with the stigma. Smaller insects might creep into the nectary and sip without the intended fulfilment. It is clear that to neither of such visitors is the welcome extended. What, then, are the conditions embodied? The insect must have a tongue of such a length that, when in the act of sipping, its head must pass beyond the anther well into the opening of the flower. ”

“ In addition to the many models of thrift and virtuous industry, embodying types of many of the trade employments known to humanity, have we not also among these "meadow tribes" our luxurious "idlers" and "exquisites," the butterflies and flower-haunting flies and "dandy" beetles; and, opposed to all these, the suggestive antithesis of the promiscuous marauders, thieves, and brigands everywhere interspersed?
Thus we have our individual insect assassin and assassination organized in war; so, on the other hand, have we our insect merrymakers; why not, then, our picnic or carnival? ”

“ From the new stand-point of evolution through natural selection the facts in Sprengel's work took on a most important significance. Darwin now reaffirmed the Sprengel theory so far as the necessity of the insect was concerned, but showed that all those perplexing floral conditions which had disproved Sprengel's assumption, instead of having for their object the conveying of pollen to the stigma of the same flower, implied its transfer to the stigma of another, cross-fertilization being the evident design, or evolved and perpetuated advantage. ”

“ Almost any bee which we may catch at random upon a milkweed gives perfect evidence of his surroundings, its toes being decorated with the tiny yellow tags, each successive flower giving and taking, exchanging compliments, as it were, with his fellows. ”

“ It has but one mission. All its fragrance, all its nectar, all its beauty of form and hue are but means towards the consummation of the eternal edict of creation—"Increase and multiply." To that end we owe all the infinite forms, designs, tints, decorations, perfumes, mechanisms, and other seemingly inexplicable attributes. Its threshold must bear its own peculiar welcome to its insect, or perhaps to its humming-bird friend, or counterpart; its nec [Pg 229] taries must both tempt and reward his coming, and its petals assist his comfortable tarrying. ”

“ Let us gently invade the little colony with our finger-tip. Touch one never so gently and it instantly disappears. Was ever thorn so deciduous? And now observe its fellows. Here one slowly glides up the stem; another in the opposite direction; another sideways. In a moment more the whole family have entirely disappeared, as if by hocus-pocus, until we discover, by a change of our point of view, that they have all congregated on the opposite side of the stem, with an agility which would have done credit to the proverbial gray squirrel. ”

“ But we have a more remarkable example of opposition in the resource of the little yellow warbler, which I have noted as one of the favorite dupes of the cow-bird—a deliberate, intelligent, courageous defiance and frequent victory which are unique in bird history, and which, if through evolutionary process they became the fashion in featherdom, would put the cow-bird's mischief greatly at a discount. ”

“ Only two years ago I discovered such a nest not a hundred feet from my house, containing one chick about two days old, another almost full-fledged, while a fresh-broken egg lay upon the ground beneath. Such a household condition would seem rather demoralizing to the cares of incubation, and doubtless the addled or ousted egg is a frequent episode in our cuckoo's experience.
It is an interesting question which the contrast of the American and European cuckoo thus presents. Is the American species a degenerate or a progressive nest-builder? ”

“ An orchid is an orchid [Pg 145] wherever it grows, and our native list of some fifty species will afford examples of as strange mechanical adaptations as are to be found among Darwin's pages. Indeed, a few of our American species are there described. One example will suffice for present illustration—the sweet-pogonia or grass-pink of our sedgy swamps (Pogonia ophioglossoides) . Its solitary rosy blossom, nodding on its slender stem above the sedges, is always a welcome episode to the sauntering botanist, and its perfume, suggesting ripe red raspberries, is unique in the wild bouquet. ”

“ As he lies there sprawling on his six spider-like legs, we may now easily test the skill of his trap, and gain some idea of his voracious personality.
If with the point of our knife-blade, holding it in the direction of the insect's body, we now touch its tail, what a display of vehement acrobatics! Instantly the agile body is bent backward in a loop, while the teeth fasten to the knife-blade with an audible click. If our finger-tip is substituted for the steel, the force of the stroke and the prick and grip of the jaws are unpleasantly perceptible. ”

“ At A the bee is seen sipping the nectar. His forward movement thus far to this point has only seemed to press the edge of the anther inward, and thus keep it even more effectually closed. As the bee retires (B) , the backward motion opens the lid, and the sticky pollen is thus brought against the insect's back, where it adheres in a solid mass. He now flies to the next Arethusa blossom, enters it as before, and in retiring slides his back against the receptive viscid stigma, which retains a portion of the pollen, and thus effects the cross-fertilization (C) . ”

“ It is probable that an accessory cross-fertilization frequently results from a mass of the pollen falling directly upon the stigma of a neighboring blossom, or even upon its own stigma, but even in [Pg 126] the latter case, as has been absolutely demonstrated as a general law by the experiments of Darwin, the pollen from a separate flower is almost invariably prepotent, and leads to the most perfect fruition, and thus to the survival of the fittest—the cross-fertilized. And, in any event, the insect is to be credited for the release of the tiny catapults by which the pollen is discharged. ”

“ The existence of an orchid with a slender nectary eleven inches in length, and with nectar secreted at its tip, is a conclusive demonstration of the existence of a moth with a tongue eleven inches in length, even though no such moth is known. ”

“ A woodchuck is perambulating my porch—he was a moment ago—presumably in renewed quest of that favorite pabulum more delectable than rowen clover, the splintered cribbings from the legs of a certain pine bench, which, up to date, he has lowered about three inches—a process in which he has considered average rather than symmetry, or the comfort of the too trusting visitor who happens to be unaware of his carpentry. ”

“ And yet how few of us have ever seen the bird to recognize it, unless perchance in the occasional flock clustering about the noses and feet of browsing kine and sheep, or perhaps perched upon their backs, the glossy black plumage of the males glistening with iridescent sheen in the sunshine. ”

“ Only the head and six prolegs of the occupant ever emerge from its case. Dragging its house along upon the plant, it attaches the open mouth of the sack close to the green seed-pod, after which the shell is gnawed through at the point of contact, and the young seeds devoured at pleasure, when a new journey is made to the next capsule, and thus until the maturity of the larva. ”