i 
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m. 
1951* 
MONACHANTHI gr MYANTHI cristati 
proles biformis. 
In November, 1836, His Graee the Duke of Devonshire 
was so kind as to put into my hands the extraordinary flower 
represented in the accompanying plate, which may be re- 
garded as one of the greatest curiosities that our gardens 
ever produced. „Accustomed, as Botanists now are, to the 
freaks and masqueradings of Nature, and to the strangest 
departures from all rules, at every step among Orchi- 
daceous plants, there is certainly nothing upon record to 
be for a moment compared with the case before us. It is 
that of a plant of Myanthus cristatus changing into a Mona- 
chanthus, related to Monachanthus viridis, and combining in 
its own proper person no fewer than three supposed genera, 
Myanthus, Monachanthus, and Catasetum. 
I doubt very much whether any one would have believed 
in the possibility of such transmutations upon weaker evi- 
dence than that l-am-about-to produce. At least, for my 
own part, I am much in the position of the person who, 
upon being assured of the truth of an improbable story, ex- 
claimed, “ Why, Sir, I would not believe it if I saw it my- 
: self.” I am the first Botanist who ever witnessed any of 
these changes ; my observation was put upon record several 
years ago, and yet, when I read it again in 1833, I really 
believed I must have been mistaken, and doubted my 
own positive testimony. In this very Botanical Register, 
vol. xii. fol. 966, in April, 1826, is the following note under 
Catasetum cristatum :— 
_ “The unimportance of the peculiar which exists in the 
labellum (namely, its flattened or fringed and crested state) is 
manifested in a singular manner by a curious monster of this 
plant, which we.have observed on an individual in the Horti- 
cultural Society's garden. Among flowers of the ordinary 
structure two or three others were observed, in which the 
labellum was precisely of the same nature as that of Cata- 
VOL. XXIII. n 
