Although an organ may not have been originally formed for some special purpose, if it now serves for this end, we are justified in saying that it is specially adapted for it. On the same principle, if a man were to make a machine for some special purpose, but were to use old wheels, springs, and pulleys, only slightly altered, the whole machine, with all its parts, might be said to be specially contrived for its present purpose. Thus throughout nature almost every part of each living being has probably served, in a slightly modified condition, for diverse purposes, and has acted in the living machinery of many ancient and distinct specific forms. In my examination of orchids, hardly any fact has struck me so much as the endless diversities of structure--the prodigality of resources--for gaining the very same end, namely, the fertilization of one flower by pollen from another plant. This fact is to a large extent intelligible on the principle of natural selection. As all the parts of a flower are co-ordinated, if slight variations in any one part were preserved from being beneficial to the plant, then the other parts would generally have to be modified in some corresponding manner. But these latter parts might not vary at all, or they might not vary in a fitting manner, and these other variations, whatever their nature might be, which tended to bring all the parts into more harmonious action with one another, would be preserved by natural selection. AN ILLUSTRATION. [Page 284.] To give a simple illustration: in many orchids the ovarium (but sometimes the foot-stalk) becomes for a period twisted, causing the labellum to assume the position of a lower petal, so that insects can easily visit the flower; but from slow changes in the form or position of the petals, or from new sorts of insects visiting the flowers, it might be advantageous to the plant that the labellum should resume its normal position on the upper side of the flower, as is actually the case with _Malaxis paludosa_, and some species of _Catasetum_, etc. This change, it is obvious, might be simply effected by the continued selection of varieties which had their ovaria less and less twisted; but, if the plant only afforded varieties with the ovarium more twisted, the same end could be attained by the selection of such variations, until the flower was turned completely round on its axis. This seems to have actually occurred with _Malaxis paludosa_, for the labellum has acquired its present upward position by the ovarium being twisted twice as much as is usual.