Mr. J. E. Bi CUE no's Observations on the Orchis militaris. 29 



less the description is accompanied with a figure. It will facili- 

 tate our inquiries if we examine each of these species separately, 

 beginning with 



Orchis fusca. 



There is less difliculty in identifying this species and tracing its 

 synonyms than in either of the other two. Linnaeus, misled by 

 the uncharacteristic and formal figure of Dillenius in Kay's 

 Si/nopsis, t. xix. f. 2. has made two varieties of it, /S and I; 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 distinouished it in his 

 Flora Londincnsis. Withering, in the second edition of his Ar- 

 rangement, has made it a variety, but says he had not seen it. Sir 

 James Smith in his excellent Flora Britannica has done the same, 

 but has followed Linnaeus too closely; and, if his synonyms be 

 correct, has included three English species, and we believe a fo- 

 reign one, in his militaris : 0. iephrosanthos, O. militaris, Eng. Bot. 

 vol. xxvii. t. 1873, 0. variegata (the fig. 22, 23, and 24, of Vail- 

 lant being this plant), and 0. 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 unwillingly, as the a. intended by 

 Linnaeus. 



The earliest notice wc have of this as an English plant is to be 

 found in Gerard, p. 16(5; 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 

 Grcenhithe," the very place referred to by James Sherard in Dil- 

 Icuius's Ray, and where it is frequently found at present. This 



information 



