The mere size of this mammoth among flowers would in itself naturally suffice to give it a distinct claim to respectful attention; but Rafflesia possesses many other sterling qualities far more calculated than simple bigness to endear it to a large and varied circle of insect acquaintances. The oddest thing about it, indeed, is the fact that it is a deliberately deceptive and alluring blossom. As soon as it was first discovered, Dr. Arnold noticed that it possessed a very curious carrion smell, exactly like that of putrefying meat. He also observed that this smell attracted flies in large numbers by false pretences to settle in the centre of the cup. But it is only of late years that the real significance and connection of these curious facts has come to be perceived. We now know that Rafflesia is a flower which wickedly and feloniously lays itself out to deceive the confiding meat-flies and to starve their helpless infants in the midst of apparent plenty. The majority of legitimate flowers (if I may be allowed the expression) get themselves decently fertilized by bees and butterflies, who may be considered as representing the regular trade, and who carry the fecundating pollen on their heads and proboscises from one blossom to another, while engaged in their usual business of gathering honey every day from every opening flower. But Rafflesia, on the contrary, has positively acquired a fallacious external resemblance to raw meat, and a decidedly high flavor, on purpose to take in the too trustful Sumatran flies. When a fly sights and scents one, he (or rather she) proceeds at once to settle in the cup, and there lay a number of eggs in what it naturally regards as a very fine decaying carcass. Then, having dusted itself over in the process with plenty of pollen from this first flower, it flies away confidingly to the next promising bud, in search both of food for itself and of a fitting nursery for its future little ones. In doing so, it of course fertilizes all the blossoms that it visits, one after another, by dusting them successively with each other’s pollen. When the young grubs are hatched out, however, they discover the base deception all too late, and perish miserably in their fallacious bed, the hapless victims of misplaced parental confidence. Even as Zeuxis deceived the very birds with his painted grapes, so Rafflesia deceives the flies themselves by its ingenious mimicry of a putrid beefsteak. In the fierce competition of tropical life, it has found out by simple experience that dishonesty is the best policy.