190 THE ORCHID REVIEW. {Sept.-Ocr., 1918. 
earliest Guatemala collections, attention was particularly directed to the 
specimens of a plant which to the habit of a Cycnoches joined the long 
pendulous stems of a Gongora, and for the possession of which, in a living 
state, no small anxiety was entertained. Some plants were speedily trans- 
mitted by Mr. Skinner, but these, on flowering, proved to be merely the 
old C. ventricosum. A mistake was, of course, suspected, and Mr. Skinner, 
being again applied to, sent over a fresh supply of plants, for the 
authenticity of which he vouched; but these were scarcely settled in the 
stove, when flowers of C. ventricosum were again produced. Mr. Skinner 
being importuned for the third time, and being then on the point of 
returning to this country, determined to take one of the plants under his 
special protection during the voyage, which, flowering on the passage, 
seemed to preclude the possibility of further confusion or disappointment. The 
specimens produced at sea were exhibited, and the plant itself placed in the 
stove at Knypersley, where it commenced growing with the utmost vigour. 
The season of flowering soon arrived, but brought with it a recurrence of 
the former scene of astonishment and vexation, for the blossoms, instead 
of those of the coveted novelty, were not distinguishable from the old C. 
ventricosum. They were still hanging to the stem when the inexplicable 
plant sent forth a spike of a totally different character, and which was, in 
fact, precisely similar to the specimens gathered in Guatemala, and to 
those produced on the voyage. It is, at present, impossible to attempt any 
explanation of so strange a phenomenon, especially on the supposition that 
the two forms of flower are analagous to the male and female blossoms of 
other tribes, for C. ventricosum alone not infrequently perfects seeds.” 
In 1843, Lindley figured what he called ‘a flower-spike bearing flowers 
of Cycnoches ventricosum and C. Egertonianum intermixed” (Bot. Reg 
1843, Misc. pp. 75-77), this having appeared in the collection of R. 5: 
Holford, Esq. Other species were subsequently described, and in 1852 Wé 
find an enumeration by Lindley of the “known forms of this strange 
genus” (Paxt. Fl. Gard., iii. p. 6), where it is remarked of C. ventricosum + 
“Sports to Egertonianum; and even towards the cucullate form of C. 
Loddigesii, as was ascertained by Sir P. Egerton in 1849. But W - 
again, is C. ventricosum? Who knows that it is not another ‘ sport” of 
C. Loddigesii, which has indeed been caught in the very act of showing . 
false countenance, something wonderfully suspicious, all things considered, 
and justifying the idea that it is also a mere Janus, whose face is green an 
short on one side, and spotted and long on the other.” 
C. ventricosum now seems to have been regarded as capable of al 
anything, and we find Reichenbach including C. Warscewiczii aS 4 
“sexus ?”” (Walp. Ann., vi. p. 560), while Hemsley added C. pentadacty!9" 
Lindl., as a synonym (Biol. Centr.-Amer., iii. p. 263), with the remat™ 
most 
