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r Che Orchid Review ~ 
a __ VOL. XXII. Many 1914. No. 255. oO 
ees] OUR NOTE BOOK. _'|Re 
HE progress of hybridisation among Orchids has frequently been 
discussed in these pages, and truly there is nothing like it in the 
annals of horticulture. But every Orchidist knows that some of his hybrid 
productions can be matched among wild plants, and some of them have: 
occasionally been startled, not to say incredulous, when some familiar 
hybrid, whose origin and history were well-known to him, has suddenly 
appeared among imported plants, as in the case of Calanthe Veitchii 
and Dendrobium Ainsworthii. But it would be a rash generalisation to 
Conclude from such evidence that there is nothing new under the sun. 
When the facts are the other way about, and the hybridist unexpectedly 
produces artificially some plant which has hitherto passed as a wild species, 
he not unnaturally removes it mentally from the list of species, perhaps. 
with a smile of satisfaction in discovering that his botanical friends don’t 
know everything—a fact which they would be among the first to admit. 
He would scarcely conclude without stronger evidence that species actually 
atise by crossing. Yet the subject was discussed by the Linnean Society 
at its last meeting, when a paper was read by Dr. John Lotsy, of Haarlem, 
“On the Origin of Species by Crossing,” an abstract of which appears at 
Pp. 70-73, 
Dr. Lotsy apparently advances the opinion that species—if there are 
any, for he says that they are mere abstractions, not realities, and that 
nobody is able to show us one—arise solely by crossing. Possibly he 
Would prefer to abolish the term species, as meaningless, or at least open to 
endless misconstruction, and substitute that of homozygote. At all events 
he says “ the world is populated—with the exception of heterozygotes—by 
a large number of sharply-defined stable homozygotes.” Thus there is no 
Toom for species and varieties. And he remarks: “ If a species Is a 
Perfectly stable genotype, reproducing faithfully its kind for ever, unless 
Crossing interferes, all differences between the individuals belonging to a 
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