SEPTEMBER, 1914.] THE ORCHID REVIEW. 261 
It is an Orchid, which alone says much, but it produces two totally 
different kinds of flowers, or rather the male and female flowers are quite 
unlike—the males numerous, small, membranous, spotted, with star-like 
lip, and long, slender column—the females few, large, fleshy, unspotted, 
with fleshy, solid lip, and short, stout column. There are several others 
with flowers just as diverse in shape, and one where the males are purple 
and the females green, while another has both sexes green. But in another 
set of species most of the parts in the two sexes are alike in size, shape, 
and colour. In other words, one set of species shows a ‘marvellous series of 
secondary sexual characters which are undeveloped in the other, 
Prof. Bateson may tell us that it is the other way about, or perhaps 
that we are looking at the organism “‘as a whole”’; that its differences 
arose by crossing, or that some of its characters have undergone segregation. 
He may ask us whether we think all the species arose from one original 
Cycnoches, or admitting it may suggest that the less complex ones must 
have lost something. It may be rank heresy to say it, but we regard it as a 
case of evolution by progressive modification, or the survival of useful 
variations. They are adaptations, and we italicise a word for which Men- 
delians seem to have no use. _It would be interesting, of course, to know 
how many steps there are, and how they arose; but they have arisen, and 
are there for all the world to see, and if Mendelians can tell us how, by 
sticking to their “‘ breeding pens” and their “seed pans,” we shall be 
content. But it will not alter the fact that the sign-posts are there, and 
that Darwin taught us a good deal of the language in which they are written. 
And let us beware of elevating analytical methods into an obsession. 
They will not teach us everything, and a good deal has been tacked on to 
Mendelism that would probably astonish the learned Abbé himself. The 
late Prof. C. C. Babington once told with great relish a story, how a young 
lady came into his room, and, seeing a specimen of Peziza coccinea on his 
table, was struck by its beauty, and asked its name. On being told, she 
exclaimed, ‘‘ Peziza ! why I have been working at that for a fortnight.” The 
story is told on the authority of the Editor of the Journal of Botany, and 
the moral lies in the application of it. 
CaTTLeya FLy.—Some of our readers are aware of the existence of a 
fly which forms galls or swellings near the growing points of Cattleya 
foots, thereby causing both disfigurement and damage, and we are asked 
whether any remedy is known besides the somewhat drastic one of cutting 
them off. We believe the fly is distinct from the one which attacks the 
young growths, and the experience of others would be appreciated. 
