198 THE ORCHID REVIEW. [Sepr.-Ocr., 1918. 
from the sensitive mechanism, for we have a female organ—one of the 
stigmas—first losing its proper function and assuming another, then pro- 
ducing a separable part as an adjunct to the male pollinary apparatus, and 
finally, on the sexes becoming separated, remaining as an essential part 
of the organisation of the male flower. 
In all this marvellous diversity and specialisation of detail in the 
pollinary apparatus we have a beautiful example of the working of Natural 
Selection, as defined by Darwin, and an effective answer to the enquiry by 
Willis as to the origin and utility of pollinia in Asclepiads—for it must be 
remembered that there is a complete analogy between the pollinia of 
Asclepiads and of the higher Orchids. And the assumption that they arose 
at a single operation is emphatically negatived. The idea will not bear a 
moment’s consideration, and it is remarkable to find it put forward at the 
present day as a serious proposition. 
Natural Selection is a great controlling force. It acts upon variation—or 
the inherent power of organisms to respond to the compelling stimulus of 
changing conditions of environment—and controls its direction. In its 
broad results it is strictly comparable with those obtained under artificial 
selection by human caprice and necessity, though its method of working is 
not so obvious, and it is not wonderful that its processes, carried on during 
thousands of generations, should have created, as Darwin well puts it, “am 
endless diversity of co-adapted structures in the several parts of the flower 
for the same general purpose.”’ 
— 
BSe| BULBOPHYLLUM BECCARIL. Kg 
TTENTION has just been called to this remarkable Bulbophyllum— 
the giant of the genus—which flowered in Messrs. E. G. Henderson's 
Nursery at Maida Vale in 1880, and was figured at t. 6567 of the Botanical 
Magazine, but quickly disappeared from cultivation. The species was 
described by Reichenbach in 1878, as follows :— 
This gorgeous Orchid would appear to have been discovered in 1853 by 
Mr. Thomas Lobb. A leaf, quite like the materials I have now at hand, 
was brought home by this excellent traveller, and Mr. Bateman showed it 
in one of his lectures at the Royal Horticultural Society. It is now kept 
in Dr. Lindley’s herbarium at Kew. Much later, full information about 
the same thing came to Europe. It was in March, 1867, when M. Odoardo 
Beccari found complete materials in Borneo. When I was at Florence the 
autumn before last I admired those wonderful collections of ae 
specimens, judicious sketches, preparations in spirits, woods, fruits, all 
with corresponding numbers, all wonderfully well kept, though collect 
