138 THE ORCHID REVIEW. 
collection of M. G. Warocqué, of sensibly larger dimensions than those of 
the plate in question. It may interest our contemporary to know that the 
flowers which called forth the remarks were as large as those produced by 
the original plant from which the plate was prepared, and that they were 
penned after an examination of over a dozen racemes from various sources. 
The largest flower on the plate is 2t inches across its broadest diameter, 
and the other nearly as large, while the living flowers measure little over I} 
inches, even on plants to which special awards have been given, and we 
_ stillawait the advent of a flower over 24 inches in diameter. We consider the 
species a very beautiful one, but not on account of the size of its individual 
flowers, which it is a matter of notoriety are exaggerated on the plate, and — 
. against which we utter a decided protest. 
NOTES ON THE GENUS CATASETUM. 
A CONSIDERABLE amount of attention has recently been paid to the genus 
Catasetum, and a few notes on the subject will doubtless prove interesting, 
especially as several additional facts have come to light since the appearance 
of my paper “On the Sexual forms of Catasetum”’ (Journ. Linn. Soc., 
XXVil., pp. 206—225, t. 8) over four years ago. 
As long ago as 1817, five years before the genus was established, a 
Catasetum is said to have flowered at Kew, and two or three others soon 
afterwards appeared in cultivation. In 1826 was recorded for the first time 
the peculiar character for which the genus has ever since been remarkable, 
namely, the production of two kinds of flowers on the same inflorescence. 
In 1824, C. cristatum flowered in the garden of the Horticultural Society, 
and a figure was published in the Botanical Register (t. g66) two years later. 
Dr. Lindley then stated that he had observed two or three flowers on the 
same inflorescence, which had lost the crested and expanded lip characteristic 
of the species, and taken the peculiar galeate shape of C. tridentatum, 
which he elsewhere alluded to (Collect. Bot., t. 40) as a most remarkable 
monstrosity, unlike anything he had seen in any other tribe of plants. The 
flowers are not represented in the plate, from which it is evident that they 
were prcduced on another inflorescence, probably at a later period. In any 
case the circumstance was sufficiently remarkable, for Lindley several years 
later doubted his own words, remarking that the statement appeared to him 
so extraordinary, especially as after seven years it had not been corroborated 
by any other case of the kind, that he concluded some mistake had been 
made (Bot. Reg., t.19474). The type of the figure is preserved in Lindley’s 
Herbarium, and has only one kind of flowers, but the other raceme is not 
altogether lost, as I at first thought, for I find that flowers of each kind 
were sent to Robert Brown, and are now in the Natural History Museum at 
South Kensington, : 
