NATURE 
541 
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 7, 1886 
ORCHIDS 
Reichenbachia: Orchids Illustrated and Described. By 
F. Sander, assisted by Eminent Scientific Authori- 
ties. Magnificently Illustrated in Colours. (London: 
Sotheran and Co.,, 1886.) 
HE first two parts of a new illustrated work on 
orchids are now before us. It is called “‘ Reichen- 
bachia,” in honour of Prof. Reichenbach, of Hamburg, 
our greatest living authority on the Orchidee. The 
author of the work, which is to be published in monthly 
parts in an “ordinary,” and an “imperial” edition 
limited to one hundred copies, is Mr. F. Sander, a well- 
known importer of, and dealer in, orchids at St. Alban’s. 
While justice should be done to the author’s energy and 
enterprise in undertaking so sumptuous and, so far as it 
has gone, so promising a production, it should be remem- 
bered that his business interests are connected with it. 
Each part of the larger edition contains four plates in 
imperial folio, with botanical and horticultural descrip- 
tions in English, French, and German, geographical and 
cultural details being also given. The botanical descrip- 
tions are by Prof. Reichenbach, who is responsible also 
for the dissections. Why, we may ask, are the descrip- 
tions of the dissections sometimes in English and some- 
times in Latin? ‘This query leads to the remark that the 
custom of giving botanical descriptions in Latin has led 
to the creation of what we venture to designate as a most 
extraordinary, barbarous, and unintelligible jargon. In 
this work, as in any other botanical book where the 
descriptions are in Latin, words are to be found in 
numbers which are in no sense Latin. Scientific 
descriptions may require the invention of words or 
terms; but the supposed convenience of their being 
understood, when in. Latin, by men of science of all 
nations is hardly a sufficient justification for the whole- 
sale creation of such a language. We may add that we 
submitted one of the Latin descriptions in this work to 
the head master of a great school, who was unable even 
to suggest a meaning for some of the terms. 
The plates in “Reichenbachia” are unquestionably 
superior, taking them one with another, to those in any 
modern botanical work we are acquainted with. They 
are far in advance both in drawing, and in truth and 
delicacy of colouring, to the “ Orchid Album” of Messrs. 
B. S. Williams and Sons, or the “ Lindenia” of the Con- 
tinental Horticultural Company of Ghent. They do 
great credit to Mr. H. G. Moore, one of the best of our 
young horticultural artists, and to Mr. J. L. Macfar- 
lane, whose work as a natural history lithographer it 
would be difficult to surpass. We are disposed to take 
exception to a remark made by Prof. Reichenbach, 
under Tab. I., Odontoglossum crispum, that Bateman’s 
“ 
“Monograph of Odontoglossum” is “perhaps the finest 
book on orchids that has ever been issued.” In our 
_ judgment it will not compare with the earlier work by the 
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7 
same author, the splendid “ Orchidaceze of Mexico and 
Guatemala.” Of the eight plates in the two parts under 
review we consider Tab. IV., “ Odontoglossum Rossii 
vubescens,’ the truest to nature, as well as the most 
VOL. XXXIV.—No., 884 
artistic. The least satisfactory is Tab. VI., Calogyne 
cristata maxima,’ in which the hairs on the tip, though 
shown in the dissection, are not even suggested. We 
must here, with all respect and deference to Prof. 
Reichenbach, demur to the varietal name maxzma. The 
flowers of this variety may be a little larger than the 
type, but if it be named saxzma, what are we to call a 
larger variety, should one turn up, as is by no means 
unlikely? These superlatives are more in keeping with 
the aims and objects of trade than with those of scientific 
nomenclature. The nurseryman naturally revels in such 
adjectives as “superbissima,” “ brilliantissima ” (!), “ deli- 
catissima,” “ magnifica,” &c., but science should repudiate 
them. Tab. III. represents a recently introduced Venus’s 
Slipper, from the Malayan Archipelago, called C. San- 
derianui, which has not been seen in flower, we believe, 
outside Mr. Sander’s nursery. We hope the remarkable 
drawing does not do more than justice to it. The plant 
is especially interesting in that it is an almost exact 
Eastern counterpart of the now well-known Cypripedium 
caudatunt from South America, which was first flowered 
by the late Mrs. Lawrence, of Ealing Park, about fifty years 
ago, Tab. I. represents the most beautiful and popular, 
and what is now the commonest and cheapest of the An- 
dean cool orchids, Odontoglossum crispum. We cannot 
admit that there is any scientific distinction maintainable 
between O. crispum, O. Bluntit, and O. Alexandre, such 
differences as there are being purely horticultural. In 
view of the latest achievement of the busy laboratory of 
Messrs. Veitch and Sons, where during recent years 
more species of one genus, Cypripedium, have been 
created than have been gathered for us from nature by 
the whole army of collectors, botanists will have to re- 
consider, it would seem, not only the species of orchids, 
but the genera. Messrs. Veitch have now in flower a 
hybrid between Sophronius grandiflora and Cattleya 
intermedia! At the Conference last year, and again 
at the recent Provincial Show of the Royal Horti- 
cultural Society at Liverpool, the attention of botanists 
and horticulturists was drawn to the confusion into which 
the nomenclature of orchids -had fallen, a confusion 
rapidly becoming worse confounded. We have examples 
of this in Odontoglossum crispum with its many synonyms 
and varieties, and in Cattleya Dowtana, Tab. V., which 
was re-christened C. avrea, simply because it was found in 
anew habitat. A new name should never be accepted, any 
more than a new genus or species, unless it be stamped 
with the approval of a recognised botanical authority. At 
present the latest and rawest recruit among the rapidly 
increasing band of orchid growers thinks nothing of coin- 
ing a new specific or varietal name, which generally 
takes the shape of a supposed Latinisation of his own 
name. 
The cultural directions are generally judicious. It is 
impossible to lay too much stress upon the necessity of 
giving orchids, whether Mexican or East Indian, the 
period of rest they have in nature. Mr. Sander proscribes 
houses with a north aspect for cool orchids. Some of 
the finest Odontoglossa and cool Oncidia we ever saw were 
grown in a house facing due north. We cannot indorse the 
recommendation of cocoa-nut fibre refuse or peat-moss 
manure either on or under stages. They rapidly decay, and 
become covered with fungi, and full of wood-lice and 
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