In the _orchis_ the stigma is placed below the anther. The stigma is in the front part of the flower and at the base of the lip, the latter being prolonged into a long tube full of nectar. The stigmatic surface is composed of very viscid matter. A bee when seeking the nectar pushes its head against the anther, and in so doing detaches the two sticky glands to which the club-shaped masses of pollen cells are attached (Plate X). It carries these away on the front part of its head. So long as the masses of pollen cells remain erect on the bee’s head, they cannot reach the stigma of any other orchis that it visits. As the sticky glands on the head contract, the pollen masses incline forward and become horizontal, so that they touch the next sticky stigma that is visited. The greater stickiness of the stigma detaches the pollen masses from the bee’s head, so that the flower is fertilized. It takes so long for the pollen masses on the bee’s head to assume the horizontal position that the insect has visited all the flowers on one orchis and then visits another plant. By this time the pollen masses are in the proper position (horizontal) to fertilize the flowers of another plant. In this way cross-fertilization is secured and the vigor of the plant maintained. It may now perhaps be appreciated how intimate are the relations between the form and habits of insects and the structure and coloration of flowers. Our standards of beauty have largely been created for us through Insect and Sexual Selection. If insects had not been developed on the earth, plants would not be ornamented by beautiful flowers, but would show only such poor and inconspicuous ones as are found on grasses, on oak, ash, and fir trees. Grant Allen has beautifully written that, “while man has tilled only a few level plains, a few great river-valleys, a few peninsular mountain slopes, leaving the vast mass of earth untouched by his hand, the insect has spread itself over every land in a thousand shapes, and has made the whole flowering creation subservient to his daily wants. His buttercup, his dandelion, and his meadowsweet grow thick in every English field. His thyme clothes the hillside; his heather purples the bleak grey moorlands. High up among the Alpine heights his gentian spreads its lakes of blue; amid the snows of the Himalayas his rhododendrons gleam with crimson light. Even the wayside pond yields him the white crowfoot and the arrowhead, while the broad expanses of Brazilian streams are beautified by his gorgeous water lilies. The insect has turned the whole surface of the earth into a boundless flower-garden, which supplies him from year to year with pollen or honey, and itself in turn gains perpetuation by the baits that it offers to his allurement.”