AucusT, 1914.] THE ORCHID REVIEW. 229 
greatly handicapped the systematic study of Orchids for a generation, and 
has probably created a good deal of unnecessary synonymy, simply because 
the world could not stand still for a quarter of a century. Of this, how- 
ever, it is too soon to speak. We must ‘‘ Wait and see.”’ 
There is another difficulty in connection with the identification of 
plants from descriptions alone that is not always realised, namely, that of 
the imperfect condition of the materials from which such descriptions were 
prepared, and this may arise from several causes. A single specimen 
cannot indicate the range of variation of a species, and although this may 
not matter much when average specimens are collected, it creates a serious 
difficulty when descriptions are prepared from unduly luxuriant or starved 
examples, or in the case of an Orchid flowering for the first time after 
being imported, and sometimes not normally developed. Species have been 
described from such materials—there may be such in the Reichenbachian 
Herbarium—though such errors are easily corrected from subsequent 
materials. Species carefully described from incomplete but normally 
developed specimens generally tell their own story, but if the materials 
are in any way abnormal or if essential characters are omitted, and the 
native country is unknown, one can easily recognise how difficult or 
impossible it may be to name closely allied species from the description 
alone, and how essential it is to preserve specimens for future reference. 
Similar illustrations indicate the value of type specimens. Strictly 
speaking, a type specimen is the actual material from which a species is 
described, however incomplete or abnormal it may be, and is always the 
ultimate court of appeal in case of doubt, though there may be duplicate 
specimens of almost equal value. For example, a collector may gather 
several specimens from the same plant, or from different plants growing 
together that he considers identical, and distribute these to different 
establishments under a common number. One of these will be named 
and described, and thus become the actual type specimen. But the 
number will be cited, enabling the other specimens to be named, and 
these, often called co-types, will be of practically equal value with the 
original for purposes of identification. Some of Schlim’s specimens were 
distributed in this way, also the earlier ones of Lehmann, but in the latter 
Case the value of the co-types is reduced by Lehmann’s unfortunate 
Practice of adding to any given number specimens gathered at a later date, 
and even in a different locality, that he thought were identical, and in this 
way he has sometimes added specimens of a distinct and allied species, thus 
destroying the value of the system of collectors’ field numbers. Such an 
€xtension of the system should not be made. 
There are other kinds of co-types. A plant from which a type specimen 
was gathered would be called the type plant, and all specimens afterwards 
