= 336 ss 
(3 : ae a 
< Che Orchid Review 5 
(2 VoL. XXIII. JANUARY, 1915. No. 265. £ey 
J 
lEeices | OUR NOTE BOOK. ‘|Aeas] 
HE waning of the old year brings us to the period of our annual survey, 
but what shall we say of 1914? It opened under conditions of great 
promise. The Royal Horticultural Society had just organised a scheme of 
registration of Hybrid Orchids, the embargo on the Reichenbachian 
Herbarium, which has retarded the progress of Orchidology for a quarter 
of a century, was about to be removed, and the cultivation of Orchids was 
never so popular or so widely éxtended. The year had run more than half 
its course on lines of peaceful progress, but then, with the suddenness of a 
cyclone, the tornado of war swept across the track, and we believe that 
Orchidists the world over will join us in deploring the catastrophe. The 
result cannot be foreseen, but already we have witnessed, regardless of 
treaty obligations, the devastation of a small state which has long been in 
the forefront of European horticulture, and the scattering of its people as 
refugees in neighbouring lands, with numberless other horrors. This is not 
the place to assess the cause of this crime against humanity, but we may 
hope and pray that one of the effects of this titanic struggle will be to 
establish upon an impregnable basis the principle that Right is the only 
true Might, and that no country may hope to attain by employing its 
military powers what it cannot reach by the methods of peaceful develop- 
ment. But this is looking too far ahead. 
Other effects of the war have been the suspension of Continental 
horticultural journals. The Revue Horticole early announced its suspension, 
owing to the fact that the whole of its staff had gone to the front, and Le 
Jardin and the Revue de l’Horticulture Belge have, we fear, shared a similar 
fate. The Gardeners’ Chronicle has for some weeks devoted a page, in 
French, to the interests of the exiled French and Belgian horticulturists in 
this country, and steps are being taken to provide temporary employment 
for these distressed people. Our own countrymen have answered the call 
1 
