My dear Sir

Will you kindly vouchsafe me a little word of help. With your charming book before me, I have been trying to fertilise the Orchids of my little collection, as they flower.¹ With some I succeed, with others there is difficulty. Let me tell you of the present “fix”.

Stanhopea oculata opened four great blooms on Thursday: today they begin to flag, & I delay no longer to impregnate. I reach down your book, turn to your figure at p. 179,² & recognise the parts well enough. Then with a toothpick I lift the anther, & out come the pollinia very well depicted by you at p. 185 fig C;³ except that in this species the poll. masses are much larger in proportion to the visc. disk. The disk is viscid enough, & I carry the whole on the toothpick. Now I want to find where to deposit it; I take for granted that it is in the hollow (marked a in my sketch,⁴ wh. is the stigma. But there is no viscosity there, nor anywhere near, up or down, not the slightest; & I cannot get the pollinia to adhere.⁵ How can this plant be fertilised? And how w^d. any insect do it? & what w^d. an insect be about, to touch the tip of this isolated projecting column? Supposing the great bee, or Scolia,⁶ or what not, wants to get at the hollow hypochil⁷ (tho’ I don’t find any honey there), he w^d. alight on the epichil⁸ whose surface is already three fourths of an inch from the rostellum, & which being moveable w^d. bend away still further,—& creep between the horns of the mesochil:—⁹ how thus could he touch the anther? & if he did, how c^d. he lodge the pollen on the stigma? & if he did, how c^d. it stick, seeing the place is not sticky?

Do resolve me these doubts; & believe me, | My dear Sir | Ever yours truly | P. H. Gosse

The disk at the end of the caudicle adheres to the stigma, but the pollen masses project, & won’t touch it, tho’ pressed against it with force.

Charles Darwin Esq^e.