905 



win's grounds at West Cowes. Woods and pastures about Combley, 

 Duxraore, and all that vicinity, frequent. Woods on the west side of 

 the Wootton River, at its mouth, plentifully. Common in woods 

 about Swainston, Calbourne, Thorley and various other places. 

 Having accidentally omitted to observe and record the stations for 

 this species in mainland Hants, I can only state my belief that it is 

 in all probability equally frequent there as in the island. Var. |3. 

 Flowers regular, without a spur. Grounds at Norris Castle, very 

 rare. This beautiful and fragrant species is well distinguished from 

 the last, by its generally greater height (often eighteen to twenty 

 inches) and robustness; much larger and broader leaves, of a purer 

 white ; thickei', more compressed and somewhat club-shaped spur ; 

 and especially by the great divergence of the anther-cells, whose 

 bases are so far apart, that were the apex of each cell produced till 

 they met, a nearly equilateral triangle would be described by their 

 union. The variety, or rather monstrosity, /3. is very remarkable, as 

 having flowers in five nearly equal divisions, quite scentless and 

 tinged with green, the lateral petals not connivent but spreading, 

 lower one or lip, broad, plane, and the spur entirely wanting. Of this 

 monstrosity I had previously seen a dried specimen from the same 

 station, in the possession of Miss E. Kilderbee, and was at a loss 

 what to consider it. Mr. D. Stock, of Bungay, has remarked a simi- 

 lar alteration of structure in the flowers of Orchis pyramidalis. 



Besides the figure of H. chlorantha in E. B. i. t. 22 (Orchis bifolia), 

 and the elegant full length one of Curtis, Fl. Londin. ii. fasc. 6, t. 65, 

 that in ' Flora Danica,' fasc. 40, t. 20362, is hardly inferior to the 

 others as a representation of our common greater Butterfly Orchis. 

 Reichenbacb's three figures, Iconogr. Bot. ix. Nos. 1143, 1144 and 

 1145, are, like too many more of that hair-splitting author's, exag- 

 gerated portraits in form and colouring of H. bifolia and its varieties, 

 H. brachyglossa and chlorantha. I have never found H. bifolia with 

 such ell-long spurs, nor H. chlorantha so outrageously green, and 

 cannot but suspect the figures of each were made from dried speci- 

 mens, and coloured from the ideal examples of a vivid imagination or 

 perhaps a treacherous memory. However that may be, they are not, 

 I am convinced, normal states of the species they profess to represent, 

 and unworthy of citation in the room of the elegant and faithful deli- 

 neations in the ' Flora Londinensis ' and ' Flora Danica' lately ad- 

 verted to. Justice, nevertheless, requires that due praise be given to 

 the many correct and sometimes admirable figures in the Iconographia 

 of Reichenbach ; a work which, with all its faults of perplexed 

 Vol. in. 6 a 



