142 GENERAL REVIEW OF THE ORCHIDEA;. 



grown in our liouses being the production of cross-breeding, they do 

 not yield a fractional part of the quantity of good seed they would 

 do in their native laud ; and so with their progeny — the tender seed- 

 lings are brought into growth under circumstances so different from 

 what they would have been in the native home of the parent plants, 

 that it is not at all surprising that multitudes of them perish in 

 their earliest infancy. The capsules are not only less perfect in our 

 houses than they would be in a state of nature^ but they also 

 require a longer time to arrive at maturity, a circumstance that 

 must tell against the progeny.* 



Such are some of the difficulties the raisers of orchids from seed 

 have to contend against ; we will here enumerate the most remark- 

 able results only, as all or nearly all the hybrids known to be in 

 cultivation up to the date of publication of the diiferent parts of 

 this work are described in their respective places. We commence 

 with those raised in our own houses. 



Dominy began to hybridise orchids at our Exeter nursery in 1858, 

 and continued his operations for some time after removing to Chelsea 

 in 1864 Seden began at Chelsea in 1866_, and has worked un- 

 interruptedly from that time to the present. Our experience therefore 

 extends over a period of forty years, during which the field of 

 operations has been greatly enlarged, especially of late years, our 

 experiments being made upon many hundreds of crosses, not only 

 between allied species but also between species of different genera. 



Among the results obtained by Dominy at Exeter Galanthe Dominii 

 raised from G. Masuca and G. furcata,\ the last named being the 

 pollen parent, will always be regarded with interest as being the 

 first hybrid orchid raised by hand that flowered. It flowered for 

 the first time in October, 1856, on which occasion the inflorescence 

 was shown by the late Mr. James Veitch to Dr. Lindley, who 

 exclaimed on seeing it, " You will drive the botanists mad," an 

 expression quite characteristic of the rigid systematists who lived 

 prior to the publication of Darwiu^s Fertilisation of Orchids, and to 



■■' H. J. Veitfili on the Ilyliiidisatioii ol' Oiohiils read at the Orchid C'ouferencu at South 

 Kensington in -May, 1885, and ]inhlishi-d in the Journal of tlie Koyal Horticultural 

 Societ}'. 



i" A white-llowered species somewhat resembling Calaatke vcrulrifolia, a native of the 

 Philippines and Java. It was introduced from the first-named locality by Cuming about the 

 j^ear 1840, but it has long since disai)i)eared from cultivation, 



