THE ORCHID HOBBY 165 



of Sir Joseph Banks, " the greatest Englishman of his time," be 

 omitted. 



The commanding position to which these men attained in 

 the world of science was of course due, primarily, to their 

 ability and equally of course to circumstance. The great 

 wars were over and in the peaceful years men were free to 

 turn their energy to constructive purposes. Horticulture 

 ever a British art became unreservedly popular. Explorers 

 and collectors, encouraged and assisted by Banks and others, 

 sent home rich supplies of new or rare plants and thus pro- 

 vided British systematists with a vast array of material for their 

 work of reconstructing the flora of the world. Such brilliant 

 use was made of opportunity that our country took the lead 

 in systematic botany. 



The activity of the collector, the generosity of the patron 

 and the labour of the systematist led not only to a general 

 advance in methods of classification but also to a very special 

 advance in the knowledge of what is, in many ways, the most 

 interesting group of plants on the face of the earth the Orchi- 

 daceae. Among the plant-treasure from India, Australia and 

 Malaya were large numbers of epiphytic orchids. The problem 

 of cultivating such strange and fascinating plants challenged 

 the skill of the gardener. The " fancying " instinct, latent in 

 every Englishman and curiously characteristic of the race, was 

 evoked by the bizarre form of these plants. Orchid-growing 

 became the hobby of the well-to-do. Gardeners with no know- 

 ledge of science and regardless of text-book dicta on sterility, 

 proceeded to raise the most marvellous series of hybrids 

 bi-generic, tri-generic, multi-generic which any sane and scho- 

 lastic botanist would have declared to be impossible. 



Brown, Blume and above all Lindley threw themselves with 

 enthusiasm into the task of discovering the clues to the classifi- 

 cation of these plants, the form of whose flowers transgress so 

 glaringly the rules of morphology dimly surmising perhaps 

 that if the key to evolution is ever to be found it will be 

 discovered by the study of the group of plants which appear 

 to represent evolution's latest prank. 



In building up the new system of classification of the 



