7O THE ORCHID REVIEW. 
by Griffith, as Vanilla sp. (Notul., iii. p. 247; Ic. Pl. Asiat., t. 281). Its 
distinctness from V. albida, Blume, was briefly indicated by Reichenbach, 
and it is rather curious that two such dissimilar species should ever have 
been confused together. For some reason or other the specific name 
proposed by Griffith was not published, and it is unadvisable at the present 
time to further swell the synonymy by recording it. The practice of raking 
together every name that has ever been applied to a species, in which some 
authors so much delight, should be discountenanced. Here is an example 
culled from Reichenbach, when figuring Cattleya luteola, Lindl. (Xen. Orch., 
i. p. 209, t. 83). He there quoted the following nine synonyms, in the 
order named :—Cattleya Urselli, Hort. Schill., Epidendrum Cattleyz, Hort., 
Cattleya epidendroides, Hort., C. Holfordi, Hort., C. salmon colour, Hort., 
C. flavida, Klotzsch, C. modesta, Meyen, and C. Meyeri, Regel. The first 
five of these names ought to have been ignored altogether, and one of them 
is positively ridiculous. Once recorded, however, they continue to be 
handed down, just as if species had been described under these names, and 
it was necessary to account for them. Such reckless additions to an already 
burdensome synonymy call for the strongest denunciation, as they serve no 
useful purpose, and are only a nuisance to future workers. It takes four 
quarto volumes, closely printed, to record the names of flowering plants alone, 
some four hundred thousand in all, and the synonymy is growing at a truly 
alarming rate. R. A. RoLrFe. 
BULBOPHYLLUM HOOKERIANUM. 
The examination of an authentic type specimen of Bulbophyllum 
Hookerianum, Wendl. and Kranzl (Gard. Chron., 1894, i. p. 685) enables me 
to settle a point left doubtful about it (supra, ii. p. 236). It is, as supposed, 
the Bulbophyllum sp. collected by Gustav Mann, and the discrepancy 
between the two descriptions arises from error in the earlier one. The 
remark ‘‘ Columna aptera, ramis 2 subulatis. porrectis” describes a sketch 
made on the sheet, in which the petals are wrongly represented as the teeth 
of the column, while in another sketch they are correctly drawn as petals. 
But I should not have described the column as “ supra in alas 2 quadratas 
aucto,” for they are really very short broad “teeth,” which term better 
describes these organs throughout the genus. But the species was named 
as long ago as 1881, for it is the Bulbophyllum oreonastes, Rchb. f. (Otia 
Bot. Hamb., p. 118), described from Mann’s self-same specimen, and of 
course the earlier name must be retained. 
BR. Ax Ei 
