ORCHID CONFERENCE. 23 



obtaining crosses in that order. I had well-formed pods last 

 spring of orchis by pollen of ophrys, as well as of other species of 

 orchis which had been forced ; and if I had remained on the spot, 

 I think I should have obtained some cross-bred Orchidaceous seed. 

 An intelligent gardener may do much for science by attempts of 

 this kind, if he keeps accurate notes of what he attempts, and 

 does not jump at immature conclusions." 



This is the earliest authentic information I have been able to 

 obtain of attempts to raise new forms among Orchids by cross- 

 breeding, and with what success the Dean himself has told us in 

 his own words. At that time, and for some years afterwards, 

 there was a prevalent notion among gardeners that muling among 

 Orchids was an impossibility, and, so far as I am aware, no one 

 attempted it besides Dean Herbert till it was taken up by Dominy, 

 at our Exeter nursery, about the year 1853. The cause of the 

 prevalent belief of that age in the impossibility of hybridisation 

 among Orchids is not, I think, far to seek. 



Dean Herbert was a man of science, and was well acquainted 

 with the structure of Orchid flowers ; to him their fertilisation by 

 hand presented no difficulty ; to horticulturists and gardeners it 

 was quite different. Not only had they, in common with many 

 others, not the slightest suspicion of the fertilisation of Orchids 

 by insect agency, but, moreover, very few of them possessed even 

 an elementary knowledge of botany. They could, it is true, distin- 

 guish accurately the stamens and pistils of many flowers familiar 

 to them, and they were aware of the functions of those organs, 

 but the confluence of those organs into the solid column of an 

 Orchid flower was to them a profound mystery. It was unfor- 

 tunate, too, that Dean Herbert's injunction to keep accurate notes 

 of what was attempted was not followed in the early days of 

 Orchid hybridisation, whence the uncertainty that still hangs over 

 the parentage of some of the earlier acquisitions. 



It was Mr. John Harris, a surgeon, of Exeter, who suggested 

 to Dominy the possibility of muling Orchids, and who pointed 

 out to him the reproductive organs seated in the column, and 

 showed that the application of the pollinia to the stigmatic sur- 

 face was analagous to the dusting of the stigma of other flowers 

 with pollen. This simple fact being once fairly grasped, the 

 work of hybridisation proceeded apace. The flowers of showy 

 species of cattleya, la?lia, calanthe, &c., were fertilised with the 

 pollinia of other species, and even the flowers of supposed different, 



