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Here, too, grows the spotted coryanthes, of the order of the Orchideae Coryanthes maculata hanging from the branches of trees, and suspending in the air the singular lips of its flowers, like fairy buckets, as if for the use of the birds and insects that inhabit the surrounding foliage.
Why is the dental formula of the viverrinae different? What purpose has the long spur in the flower of Angraecum, or the marvellous bucket of Coryanthes, the flytrap of Dionaea, the pitcher of Nepenthes? What is the cause, what is the purpose, what is the plan in the scheme of nature, of these structures?
For these curious contrivances in the case of Salvia, Coryanthes, and other plants, would in any case have been no use to the plant till the whole machinery was complete. Now, on the theory of slow changes gradually accumulating till the complete result was attained, there must have been generation after generation of plants, in which the machinery was as yet imperfect and only partly built up.
The nectar may be stored in variously shaped receptacles, with the stamens and pistils modified in many ways, sometimes forming trap-like contrivances, and sometimes capable of neatly adapted movements through irritability or elasticity. From such structures we may advance till we come to such a case of extraordinary adaptation as that lately described by Dr. Cruger in the Coryanthes.
Let me only recall one other case, that of the orchid, called Coryanthes macrantha. In this flower there are two little horns, which secrete a pure water, or rather water mixed with honey. The lower part of the flower consists of a long lip, the end of which is bent into the form of a bucket hanging below the horns.
The construction of the flower in another closely allied orchid, namely, the Catasetum, is widely different, though serving the same end; and is equally curious. Bees visit these flowers, like those of the Coryanthes, in order to gnaw the labellum; in doing this they inevitably touch a long, tapering, sensitive projection, or, as I have called it, the antenna.
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