284 ME. O. BEKTHAM OK ORCHIDE.E. 



began to consider the general arrangement of the Order. I am 

 not aware that he has as yet published the results of his in- 

 vestigations ; but on the occasion of his visit to Kew last spring 

 he called my attention to various points which I had overlooked. 

 The general principles upon which Lindley divided the Order 

 remain true to the present day, although his tribes may require 

 some modification in detail, the distinctive characters having 

 become better understood, and proving not near so constant as 

 they appear at first sight, and their definitions, as generally re- 

 ceived, often very vague, owing chiefly to the inaccuracy of some 

 of the terms used. Some botanists have therefore recently pro- 

 posed to overturn the system altogether ; but I am not aware of 

 any plausible one being substituted for it. J. Gr. Beer, of Vienna, 

 in his ' Praktische Studien an der Familie der Orchideen,' 1854, 

 a work chiefly horticultural, after strongly criticising Lindley's 

 classification, proposes a division of the Order into six tribes 

 founded solely on modifications of the labellum, to the total 

 neglect of all other characters, structural or vegetative. He goes 

 no further in his systematic arrangement, but gives under each 

 tribe an alphabetical list of genera ; where we find, for instance, 

 Orchis and Habenaria in the second tribe associated with 

 Angracum, Plains, Calanthe, CorallorMza, and others, whilst 

 Serapias and Oplirys are in the fifth tribe associated with 

 Oncidium, Luisia, Malaxis, JEpipactis, Caladenia, and others, re- 

 sulting in the most incongruous medley conceivable. Nine 

 years later, in his ' Beitrage zur Morphologie und Biologie der 

 Orchideen,' a larger work, valuable for the accurate delineation 

 and description of the capsules and seeds of all the species 

 which he could obtain in fruit, and of the germination of several 

 of them, he still insists on the value of his tribes, reducing 

 them only from six to five, by the exclusion of Cypripedium from 

 the order. 



The Lindleyan system has been shortly summarized as 

 follows : — ■ 



* Pollen-masses tcaxy. 

 Malaxideae. No caudicle. 



Bpidendrece. One or two caudicles, but no gland, 

 Vandea. One or two caudicles attached to a gland. 



** Pollen-masses granular or powdery. 

 Ophrydea;. Anther adnate to the top of the column. 



