FEBRUARY, 1914.) THE ORCHID REVIEW. 39 
the greatest care, sometimes only one or two seedlings have been successfully 
raised. 
If, instead of starting with the Sophronitis hybrids ready made as 
parents, one decides to make them, time is lost, and it should be borne in 
mind that these flowers differ in colour as well as shape and size ; some are 
almost pure vermilion, whilst others have distinct purple in them. It is 
important in choosing the Cattleya which is to be used, that the Sophronitis 
should be selected according to the hoped-for result. 
Whichever method is followed there will be many disappointments in 
the resulting flowers—there always are—but I feel sure that on the whole 
the patience and perseverance expended upon Sophronitis grandiflora as a 
parent on the one side, and Brassavola Digbyana as a parent on the other, 
will be amply rewarded. RICHARD G. THWAITES. 
Chessington, Streatham Hill. 
Eien 
T a meeting of the Linnean Society held on January 14th Mr. G. 
Claridge Druce, M.A., F.L.S., read a paper on a Marsh Orchis, for 
which he proposed the name Orchis pretermissa (a Latin description being 
given), and contrasted’ it with the true flesh-coloured O. incarnata of 
Linnzus, as described by C. B. Clarke in Journ. Linn. Soc., xix. (1881) 
p. 206, showing how it differed in the shape of the flowers and in other 
characters from that plant. O. pretermissa is the crimson-flowered plant 
which has a wide distribution through South and Central England. A 
beautiful painting of it has been executed by Miss Trower from a seedling 
raised by Mr. B. Savile Ogle, who had collected the parent plant before 
1903 on the borders of Berks and Hants. The seedlings obtained from it 
resembled each other and the parent én all the stages of their growth. 
The parent was figured as O. incarnata in the ‘“‘ Report of the Ashmolean 
Natural History Society of Oxfordshire” for 1904. Mr. Druce himself 
collected the plants in Nottinghamshire in 1878, in Oxfordshire in 1882, 
in Berks and in Norfolk. He has as yet been unable to see any description 
or figure of his plant in British or European works. 
Mr. P. M. Hall and Mr. R. B. Ullman, who have studied the Orchids 
from round Winchester with great assiduity, came independently to the 
opinion that it was a distinct species (a note on it appears in the curtailed 
‘Report of the Winchester College Nat. Hist. Society”), and found it 
abundantly in Hampshire. A photograph by Mr. Bedford showed that it 
occurred near Lewes in Sussex. Reference was made to another and as 
yet undescribed form from the Coast Sands of Britain, as well as to a 
northern plant, but these await further investigation. : 
A NEW BRITISH ORCHIS. Feary] 
