282 MB. G. BEKTHAM ON ORCHIDE^. 



the fashion amongst the wealthy amateurs ; and the amount of 

 money now spent in the collection, importation, cultivation, and 

 illustration of the innumerable showy forms would, if summed 

 up, appear quite fabulous. At the same time, in a scientific 

 point of view, the interest in the Order has been as much inten- 

 sified by the investigations of Darwin, showing how important 

 in the life-history of the several races are those singular modi- 

 fications in the fertilizing-apparatus and its protecting perianth, 

 which had till then only excited curosity. 



For the systematic arrangement of the several races of 

 Orchidese the preliminary labours of Swartz, published in the 

 Transactions of the Academy of Stockholm for 1800, were 

 excellent for the time, but became obsolete from the great influx 

 of new forms unknown to him. Eobert Brown, in the fifth 

 volume of the second edition of Aiton's ' Hortus Kewensis,' and 

 in his Prodromus of the Australian Flora, first established the 

 principles of their classification on a solid basis ; and this was 

 thoroughly worked out by Lindley, in as far as bis materials 

 allowed, iu a variety of works, and the results summarized in his 

 1 Genera and Species of Orchids,' many of the genera further re- 

 vised, with the fresh materials received up to the years 1853 to 

 1855, in his ' Folia Orchidacea.' Since that time, notwithstanding 

 the many eminent botanists who have worked at the Order, we 

 have had no systematic digest of the genera and species so largely 

 multiplied during the twenty-five or thirty years that have 

 elapsed ; and the greater number of the splendidly illustrated 

 works on Orcbideae which have been published have been chiefly 

 devoted to showy species, and almost always unaccompanied by 

 any analysis exhibiting their generic characters. There are, 

 however, some important exceptions; and in the first rank must 

 be placed Blume's works. They all show, in whatever tribe of 

 plants he took in hand, a wonderful acuteness and correctness 

 of observation. His first great work, the ' Bijdragen tot de 

 Flora van Nederlandsch Indie,' worked out and printed in 

 Java without the aid of European herbaria and libraries, is ex- 

 ceptionally free from mistakes and blunders ; and though many 

 of his sections may have become genera, or some of his genera 

 reduced to sections, yet they have almost all been adopted as 

 distinct groups. In OrchideK the portion of the fourth volume 

 of his ' Kumphia,' and the splendid volume devoted to the Order, 

 are as yet unsurpassed models of true botanical illustration. 



