is condition, and has determined to rationally fulfil the
ideal of his environment, as he may perhaps have already done
voluntarily before. The buzzing ceases, and our bee is now finding sweet
solace for his incarceration in the copious nectar which he finds
secreted among the fringy hairs in the upper narrowed portion of the
flower, as shown at Fig. 18 A. Having satiated his appetite, he
concludes to quit his close quarters. After a few moments of more
vehement futile struggling and buzzing, he at length espies, through the
passage above the nectary fringe, a gleaming light, as from two windows
(A). Towards these he now approaches. As he advances the passage becomes
narrower and narrower, until at length his back is brought against the
overhanging stigma (Fig. 18 B). So narrow is the pass at this point that
the efforts of the bee are distinctly manifest from the outside in the
distension of the part and the consequent slight change in the droop of
the lip. In another moment he has passed this ordeal, and his head is
seen protruding from the window-like opening (A) on one side of the
column. But his struggles are not yet ended, for his egress is still
slightly checked by the narrow dimensions of the opening, and also by
the detention of the anther, which his thorax has now encountered. A
strange etiquette this of the cypripedium, which speeds its parting
guest with a sticky plaster smeared all over its back. As the insect
works its way beneath the viscid contact, the anther is seen to be drawn
outward upon its hinge, and its yellow contents are spread upon the
insect's back (Fig. 18 C), verily like a plaster. Catching our bee
before he has a chance to escape with his generous floral compliments,
we unceremoniously introduce him into another cypripedium blossom, to
which, if he were more obliging, he would naturally fly. He loses no
time in profiting by his past experience, and is quickly creeping the
gantlet, as it were, or braving the needle's eye of this narrow passage.
His pollen-smeared thorax is soon crowding beneath the overhanging
stigma again, whose forward-pointed papillae scrape off a portion of it
(Fig. 18 B), thus insuring the cross-fertilizing of the flower, the bee
receiving a fresh effusion of cypripedium compliments piled upon the
first as he says "good-bye." It is doubtful whether in his natural life
he ever fully effaces the telltale effects of this demonstrative _au
revoir_.

[Illustration: Fig. 18 A]