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tion in which nine contested. His first published Dee was on 
oak-galls, which he had observed in the Kew Arboretu This 
appeared in the Entomologist for 1881, and was nonkeet | in the 
volume for 1883. So far as we have ascertained his earliest 
contribution to orchidology was a ‘‘ Revision of the genus 
Phalaenopsis,”” which was published in the Gardeners’ Chronicle, 
1886, vol. xxvi. At that time we had no living English authority 
on the Orchidaceae. Lindley had been dead many years. The 
considerable ig of identifying old species and describing new 
ones—and at a period too when it might be said that the 
cultivation ot orchids had become a craze—was to a large extent 
in the hands of Prof. H. G. Reichenbach of Hamburg. He spent 
much time in this country and was in close touch with our orchid 
importers and cultivators, who made a practice of appealing to 
him for botanical assistance. In 1889 Reichenbach died, and 
the state of feeling that must have been produced when it was 
known he had disposed of his Herbarium can be more easily 
imagined than described. Intentionally or not a severe blow 
had been struck at Rolfe, who in the few years immediately 
preceding Reichenbach’s death had taken much interest in 
orchids and had published eae papers on them, besides the 
Revision above mentioned. e situation and how it was met 
is admirably explained in the cor ‘Bulletin, 1891, p. 193. Rolfe 
speedily became the English expert in orchidology, and a 
respected and trusted authority everywhere. During the quarter 
of a century in which Reichenbach’s many types, often them- 
selves the only existing clues that could be relied on for deter- 
mining what he meant by his species, Rolfe and other botanists 
have described a great number of orchids supposed to be new. 
An examination of Reichenbach’s Herbarium will, no doubt, 
reveal the fact that some of them were not new, but had been 
described and published in some fashion by Reichenbach 
himself; therefore, it is probable that many names which have 
become well-known will, in observance of the law of priority, 
have to be relegated to synonymy. 
Rolfe’s contributions to the literature * botany and particu- 
larly to that of the Orchidaceae have been very numerous an 
valuable. Within a few days of his ‘eat the 48th decade of 
his diagnoses of new orchids appeared in the Kew Bulletin. He 
elaborated the Orchidaceae for the Flora of Tropical Africa and 
the Flora Capensis (excepting the tropical Brownleeas and 
Disas, which were dealt with by Mr. N. E. Brown) and for the 
Index Florae Sinensis. He published many papers on the family 
in the Kew Bulletin, the Journal of the Linnean Society, the 
Gardeners’ Chronicle, and in other periodicals; _and all the 
a few before that year, were by him. He assisted the late 
Mr. Sander of St. Albans with the two volumes of the second 
series of the magnificent ‘‘ Reichenbachia”’; edited for some 
years the English edition of “ Lindenia,” and in 1893 founded 
