11)51* 



MONACHANTHI et MYANTHI cristati 

 proles biformis. 



In November, 1836, His Grace the Duke of Devonshire 

 was so kind as to put into my hands the extraordinary flower 

 represented in the accompanying phite, wliich 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 oi Myanthus cristatus changing into a Mona- 

 chaiithus, 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 I am about to produce. At least, for my 

 own part, I am much in the position of tlie 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 Registei", 

 vol. xii. fol. 966, in April, 1826, is the following note under 

 Catasetum cristatum : — 



"The unimportance of the peculiarity 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 

 labellimi was precisely of the same nature as that of Cata- 



VOL. XXIII. F 



