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MR. R. ALLEN ROLFE ON THE GENUS VANILLA. 441 
both equally failed to recognise in it the true Mexican Vanilla 
of commerce, whose flowers were now figured for the first time. 
It is not a little curious that Francis Bauer should have prepared 
a drawing from the self-same plant in 1807, showing a fresh 
fruit. The plate was not published until some years later, 
between 1830 and 1838 (‘ Ill. Orch. Pl., Gen.,’ tt. 10, 11), but a 
note states that it was “drawn by Mr. Bauer in 1807.” This 
is the first evidence of the production of fruit in Europe. How 
the flower became fertilized is not known. 
Accounts of the Vanilla in its native habitat were successively 
published by Aublet in 1775 (‘Hist. Pl. Guian. Franc.,’ ii. 
Mem. 4, pp. 77-85), by Humboldt in 1811 (‘ Voy. de Humb. et 
Bonpl.,’ pt. 3, vol. ii. p. 437), and by Schiede in 1829 (Linnea, 
iv. pp. 573-576), chiefly with regard to their economic aspect, 
though the latter described four supposed new species, all of 
which, however, were previously known under other names. 
In 1825 Blume described two species from the Malayan 
Archipelago (‘ Bijdr.,’ p. 422) and a third which had flowered 
in the Buitenzorg Botanic Garden, whence it had been obtained 
from Europe, and which subsequently proved to be V. planifolia. 
In 1838 a remarkable paper was read before the British 
Association at Newcastle by Professor Charles Morren, entitled, 
“On the production of Vanilla in Europe,” which was published 
in the following year (Ann. Nat. Hist., Ser. I. iii. pp. 1-9), in 
which the author showed how he had obtained two large crops 
of pods by fertilizing the flowers artificially, and suggested 
that its failure to fruit in India was probably due to the absence 
of some species of insect which doubtless existed in Mexico, and 
there fertilized the flowers. 
In 1840 Dr. Lindley admitted twelve species in his ‘Genera 
and Species of Orchidaceous Plants’ (pp. 434-437), but several 
of these are much confused and others synonymous, most of the 
old errors being here reproduced. Since that period about 25 
additional species have been described in various scattered 
publications, and in 1895 a full account of the species known to 
have aromatic fruits appeared in the Kew Bulletin (pp. 169-178), 
in which the history of the economic species was traced and two 
additional ones described; but no systematic revision of the 
entire genus has been attempted until now. 
In the present paper 50 species are admitted, of which 17 are 
new, including five which have been confused with previously 
