-Mr. J. E. BreuzNo's Observations on the Orchis militaris. 20 
less the description is accompanied with a figure. It will facili- 
tate our inquiries if we examine each of these species pentes 
beginning with aE 
ORCHIS FUSCA. : e 
There is less difficulty in identifying this species and tracing its 
synonyms than in either of the other two. Linnæus, misled by 
the uncharacteristic and. formal figure of Dillenius in Ray's 
Synopsis, t. xix. f. 2. has made two varieties of it, and 3; and 
Hudson is the first author, adopting the Linnean system, who 
made it distinct under the name of purpurea. He, however, 
united it again with militaris in the second edition of his Flora. 
Jacquin clearly defined the plant; and his opinion was followed 
by Murray, Hoffman, Roth, Willdenow, Swartz, and most of the 
continental botanists. Curtis also has well distinguished it in his 
Flora Londinensis. Withering, in the second edition of his Ar- 
rangement, has made it a variety, but says he had not seenit. Sir 
James Smith in his excellent Flora Britannica has done the same, 
but has followed Linnzus too closely; and, if his synonyms be 
correct, bas included three English species, and we believe a fo- 
reign one, in his militaris : O. tephrosanthos, O. militaris, Eng. Bot. 
vol. xxvii. £. 1873, O. variegata (the fig. 22, 23, and 24, of Vail- 
lant being this plant), and O. fusca. ‘The error in the first vo- 
. lume of English Botany, where fusca is called militaris, is cor- 
rected in a later volume, to which we have referred ; and another 
plant is admitted, though mages as the # intended by 
Linnæus. 
The earliest notice we have of this as an English plant is to be 
found in Gerard, p. 166; where he informs us that it grows in 
many places in Kent with the Bee and the Fly Satyrions, and 
among the rest * upon the hills adjoining to a village named 
Greenhithe,” the very place referred to by James Sherard in Dil- 
lenius’s Ray, and where it is frequently found at present. ‘This 
information 
