The adaptation of flowers for cross-fertilisation is a subject which has interested me for the last thirty-seven years, and I have collected a large mass of observations, but these are now rendered superfluous by the many excellent works which have been lately published.  In the year 1857 I wrote a short paper on the fertilisation of the kidney bean (1/1.  ‘Gardeners’ Chronicle’ 1857 page 725 and 1858 pages 824 and 844.  ’Annals and Magazine of Natural History’ 3rd series volume 2 1858 page 462.); and in 1862 my work ’On the Contrivances by which British and Foreign Orchids are Fertilised by Insects’ appeared.  It seemed to me a better plan to work out one group of plants as carefully as I could, rather than to publish many miscellaneous and imperfect observations.  My present work is the complement of that on Orchids, in which it was shown how admirably these plants are constructed so as to permit of, or to favour, or to necessitate cross-fertilisation.  The adaptations for cross-fertilisation are perhaps more obvious in the Orchideae than in any other group of plants, but it is an error to speak of them, as some authors have done, as an exceptional case.  The lever-like action of the stamens of Salvia (described by Hildebrand, Dr. W. Ogle, and others), by which the anthers are depressed and rubbed on the backs of bees, shows as perfect a structure as can be found in any orchid.  Papilionaceous flowers, as described by various authors—­for instance, by Mr. T.H.  Farrer—­offer innumerable curious adaptations for cross-fertilisation.  The case of Posoqueria fragrans (one of the Rubiaceae), is as wonderful as that of the most wonderful orchid.  The stamens, according to Fritz Muller, are irritable, so that as soon as a moth visits a flower, the anthers explode and cover the insect with pollen; one of the filaments which is broader than the others then moves and closes the flower for about twelve hours, after which time it resumes its original position. (1/2.  ‘Botanische Zeitung’ 1866 page 129.) Thus the stigma cannot be fertilised by pollen from the same flower, but only by that brought by a moth from some other flower.  Endless other beautiful contrivances for this same purpose could be specified.

Long before I had attended to the fertilisation of flowers, a remarkable book appeared in 1793 in Germany, ‘Das Entdeckte Geheimniss der Natur,’ by C.K.  Sprengel, in which he clearly proved by innumerable observations, how essential a part insects play in the fertilisation of many plants.  But he was in advance of his age, and his discoveries were for a long time neglected.  Since the appearance of my book on Orchids, many excellent works on the fertilisation of flowers, such as those by Hildebrand, Delpino, Axell and Hermann Muller, and numerous shorter papers, have been published. (1/3.  Sir John Lubbock has given an interesting summary of the whole subject in his ’British Wild Flowers considered in relation to Insects’ 1875.  Hermann Muller’s