ae aS, 
different flowers could have been borne by one and the same plant. ” However to 
show that such a phenomenon was within the bounds of possibility, he gave a 
figure (on p. 77) in which the flowers of C. ventricosum and C. Egertonianum 
actually grew intermixed on the same raceme, in the collection of M' Hotrorp, 
of Westonbirt, near Tetbury, in Gloucestershire, and which had been exhibited at 
a meeting of the Horticultural Society. And at t. 22 of the same volume he 
remarks: — “ If we were informed that the Camelopard in the Zoological Gardens 
had shortened the vertebra of its neck till it was no longer than a cow’s, or that 
a Kangaroo had exchanged its tail for the switch of a Shetland pony, a more sur- 
prising thing would not be announced than those changes with which we are now 
familiar in this group of Orchidaceae. ” 
At t. 46 of the same work for 1846 he further remarks : — “ C. Egertonianum 
“ 
is then a “ sport, ” as gardeners say, of C. ventricosum. But what again is 
C. ventricosum? Who knows that it is not another “ sport ” of C. Loddigesii, which 
has indeed been caught in the very act of showing a false face, something 
wonderfully suspicious, all things considered, and justifying the idea that it is 
itself a mere Janus, whose face is green and short on one side, and spotted and 
long on the other. Then if such apparently honest species as C. Egertonianum, 
ventricosum, and Loddigesii are but counterfeits, what warrant have we for regar- 
ding the other so-called species of not being further examples of plants masque- 
rading with false faces? For ourselves, we cannot answer the question ; nor should 
we be astonished at finding some day a Cycnoches no longer a Cycnoches, but 
something else; perhaps a Catasetum. If one could accept the doctrine of the 
author of the “ Vestiges, ” it might be said that in this place we have found 
plants actually undergoing the changes which he assumes to be in progress 
throughout nature, and that they are thus subject to the most startling conditions 
only because their new forms have not yet acquired stability. ” 
Several other species have successively appeared in cultivation, one of which, 
namely C. Warscewiczii, produced two kinds of flowers on the same plant. More 
recently the second sex of three other species have been discovered. A plant 
of C. pentadactylon Linvu., in the collection of E. Gorro, Esq., of The Logs, 
Hampstead Heath, produced flowers of both Sexes, and a short time ago Mr. Ranp, 
of Para, Brazil, sent to Kew a fine specimen showing the same phenomenon. 
Then a plant in the collection of Signor H. J. Ross, of Poggio Gherardo, Florence, 
Italy, produced flowers of both kinds, and proving to be a distinct species, was 
described as C. Rossianum. Lastly, during the present summer the female of 
C. chlorochilon has appeared, both in the collection of M. Houzeavu bE Lena, of 
Hyon, Mons, Belgium, and with Messrs F. SanpER & Co., of St. Albans. 
The last example is a specially interesting one, as it enabled a point to be 
cleared up which has long remained doubtful, and showed that, as in the allied 
genus Catasetum, the differences in the structure of the flowers are simply diffe- 
(To be continued on p. 34.) 
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