ApRIL, 1917 ] THE ORCHID REVIEW. 75 
| Sica DR. 4thD4 EY: POSES 
> sagrets the most familiar name in the annals of Orchidology is that 
of Dr. Lindley, who for a period of about forty years was the 
historian of the Orchid family, and who may be said to have laid the 
foundations of its classification, at all events so far as tropical Orchids are 
concerned. It may, therefore, be interesting to give the substance of an 
appreciation by his successor, Prof. H. G. Reichenbach, which appeared as 
the preface to the second volume of that author’s Xenia Orchidacea. 
The author remarks :—Instead of introducing this volume with an 
account of my own labours and hopes, I prefer giving some reminiscences 
of a man, whose death, at half-past six o’clock on the morning of November 
1st, 1865, falls within its period of issue—I mean of Lindley. 
John Lindley found no useful work treating of the overwhelming 
majority of Orchids—namely, those with waxy pollen masses. Louis 
Claude Richard’s excellent little memoir is essentially the starting-point of 
our knowledge of European Orchids. True, R. Brown’s earlier celebrated 
elaboration of the Australian Orchids includes thirteen species with waxy 
pollen, referred to four ‘‘ genera”; but there is a total absence of a proper 
appreciation of the important characters. In London our investigator had 
the not always willingly-accorded access to a small collection of specimens 
stuck down on paper, and the gradually increasing numbers of cultivated 
forms, mainly grown at his and Cattley’s instigation, unfolded alluring 
malformations to the yet unprepared mind, such as those which even now 
cause us to look forward with such a suspense to the first flowering of 
many newly-introduced forms. 
During the period of Lindley’s earliest labours many leading men were 
striving to reach the same goal, and discover the key to a systematic 
arrangement of Orchids. Kunth, who was so fortunate as to participate 
in the teaching of the great master, L. C. Richard, unhappily united the 
Ophrydez and the Neottiew, against the opinion of the latter. On the 
other hand, his researches into and separation of the Epidendroid genera 
were far more successful than the contributions of Blume in his Tabellen 
and Bijdragen. Neither the latter, nor Aubert du Petit-Thouars—for 
whom, however, we must conceive a liking if we take him according to his 
times—developed that accuracy of observation in the investigation of the 
contents of the anther which Lindley made his great object, and in which 
ies the greatest merit of his labours among Orchids. R. Brown soon 
retired from the competition. 
Probably we should be right in saying that the self-dependent Lindley 
owed nothing to fortune. We might regard his residence in London as a 
