NovEMBER, 1914.] THE ORCHID REVIEW. 335 
spike of masculine flowers, and to add to my disappointment I have since 
heard from Mr. Rolfe that the third sex is a myth.” 7 
“‘T called upon Mr. Freeman, the present superintendent of the Botanic 
Gardens at Trinidad, to tell him the history of my versatile bulb, and to 
ask permission to visit his Orchid house. He telephoned to his foreman, 
but somehow or other the message miscarried, and there was no one to 
meet me when I arrived at the gardens. I had, however, a most intelligent 
and loquacious negro cabby, who, when he heard the object of my visit, 
told me that he knew a good deal about Orchids, as he had been employed 
to collect them in Colombia, Venezuela, and Brazil, and he conducted me 
to the Orchid house, where I found quite a large collection of the bulbs 
_ of my particular Catasetum, one with a female flower and another in bud. 
He took me afterwards to the Orchid house of Mr. Andre, a famous 
collector, and there also I found’several specimens of the interesting bulb, 
but not one in bloom. Trinidad is, I imagine, its sole or principal 
habitat.”’ 
The production of male and female flowers by this versatile plant has 
already been recorded in our pages O.R., Xx. p. 3743 XXi. pp. 39, 383), and 
now the plant has gratified Mr. Fraser by producing a flower which is 
neither the one nor the other, and if not neuter in the sense of the term 
used by Darwin, it is as nearly neuter as the plant is ever likely to produce. 
This inflorescence produced three flowers, two of them females, but the 
third combined the general shape of the female with the presence of the 
antennz of the column and the pollinia of the male, though in both cases 
smaller than in the normal male flower. It is thus hermaphrodite, but not 
the hermaphrodite described by Darwin, which Mr. Fraser naturally hoped 
tosee. Such flowers, with neither sex perfect, are occasionally seen in the 
genus. This inflorescence is also being preserved at Kew. 
Darwin’s hermaphrodite was something quite different. That author 
remarked: ‘“ Botanists were astonished when Sir R. Schomburgk stated 
that he had seen three forms, believed to constitute three distinct genera, 
namely Catasetum tridentatum, Monachanthus viridis, and Myanthus 
barbatus, all growing on the same plant. Lindley remarked that ‘such 
cases shake to the foundation all.our ideas of the stability of genera and 
species.’”” Darwin investigated these three forms, and came to the 
conclusion: “ Myanthus barbatus may be considered as an hermaphrodite 
form of the same species of which the Catasetum is the male and the 
Monachanthus the female.” He also figured the three, but Mr. Fraser will 
never find them all on the same plant. The unfortunate fact is that the 
females of three different Catasetums have been called Monachanthus 
Vitidis, Lindl. Darwin’s supposed hermaphrodite is simply the male of 
Catasetum barbatum, Lindl., and his Monachanthus viridis the female of 
