222 ABOUT ORCHIDS. 
Harriette from Ph. amabilis x Ph. violacea, 
named after the daughter of Hon. Erastus Corning, 
of Albany, U.S.A. 
Oncidiums yield only two natural hybrids at 
present, and those uncertain; others are suspected. 
We have no garden hybrids, I believe, as yet. 
So it is with Odontoglossums, as has been said, 
but in the natural state they cross so freely that a 
large proportion of the species may probably be 
hybrids. I allude to this hereafter. 
I have left Cypripediums to the last, in these 
hasty notes, because that supremely interesting 
genus demands more than a record of dry facts. 
Darwin pointed out that Cypripedium represents 
the primitive form of orchid. He was acquainted 
with no links connecting it with the later and more 
complicated genera ; some have been discovered 
since that day, but it is nevertheless true that “an 
enormous extinction must have swept away a 
multitude of intermediate forms, and left this single 
genus as the record of a former and more simple 
state of the great orchidacean order.” The geo- 
graphical distribution shows that Cypripedium was 
more common in early times—to speak vaguely— 
and covered an area yet more extensive than now. 
And the process of extermination is still working, 
as with other primitive types, 
