ORCHIDS AND HYPRIDIZING, 233 
be tested, for M. Alfred Bleu has “made the 
cross” of C. superba and C. Eldorado, and its 
flower is expected with no little interest, 
These cases, and many more, are palpable. We 
see a variety in the making at this date. A 
thousand years hence, or ten thousand, by more 
distant alliances, by a change of conditions, the 
variety may well have developed into a species, 
or, by marriage excursions yet wider, it may have 
founded a genus. 
I have named Mr. Cookson several times; in 
fact, to discourse of hybridization for amateurs 
without reference to his astonishing “record” 
would be grotesque. One Sunday afternoon, ten 
years ago, he amused himself with investigating 
the structure of a few Cypripeds, after reading 
Darwin’s book ; and he impregnated them. To 
his astonishment the seed-vessel began to swell, 
and so did Mr. Cookson’s enthusiasm  simul- 
taneously. He did not yet know, and, happily, 
these experiments gave him no reason to suspect, 
that pseudo-fertilization can be produced, actually, 
by anything. So intensely susceptible is the 
stigmatic surface of the Cypriped that a touch 
excites it furiously. Upon the irritation caused 
by a bit of leaf, it will go sometimes through ail 
the visible processes of fecundation, the ovary will 
