THE ORCHID REVIEW. 165 
DIES ORCHIDIANZA. 
THE great Temple Show has been the event of the month, and I am glad 
to be able to congratulate the Royal Horticultural Society and its officials 
on having again achieved an undoubted success. For nearly a fortnight 
prior to the great event the weather had been cold and dull, and on the first 
day of the show the light was none too good in the tents, but afterwards it 
brightened, and, as Jupiter Pluvius kindly withheld the watering pot, a large 
attendance of the public was secured. The Orchids are always one of the 
principal features of the Temple Show, and this year they were quite as 
numerous as ever, and for the most part excellent in quality, though I did 
not see quite as much in the way of novelty as.on some former occasions. 
The old evil of overcrowding was, I think, less pronounced than usual, but 
still not altogether absent, and there is still room for improvement. 
One thing which especially strikes me is the desirability of devising 
some better means of indicating the limits of the different groups. Ina 
few cases I found it almost impossible to ascertain to whom certain plants 
belonged, and from the number of inquiries made by visitors it was evident 
that others found the same difficulty. Indeed, there are one or two plants 
which the gardening papers do not agree about, a thing which also 
occasionally happens at ordinary meetings. One does not expect too much 
from the daily papers on such matters, but I have two cuttings about Sir 
Trevor Lawrence’s Cypripedium Stonei platytaenium which may interest 
the curious. One states that “ Baron Schroder exhibited the sensation of 
the Show . . . one of the only fine plants in this country of Cypripedium 
Stonei platyplanium . . . now said to be worth a thousand guineas.” The 
other, which is more fortunate about the ownership, describes it as “of 
almost priceless value, because it has longer whiskers and more pronounced 
markings than the ordinary kind.” I am not sure whether .the blunder 
about the ownership of this plant can be traced to the imperfect system 
pointed out, but whether or no a remedy for the defect might very easily be 
found. Perhaps the exhibitors themselves might do more to indicate the 
limits of their groups. 
— 
There is another matter which I am rather perplexed about. The 
Gardeners’ Chronicle report states that this very plant received a Silver Flora 
Medal as well asa First-class Certificate, but on consulting the Society's 
Official Prize List I find no mention of the first-named award. The same 
report states that Sir Trevor Lawrence also received a Silver ees Medal 
for Epidendrum Stamfordianum, ‘ for continued good culture, : but here 
again the Official List is silent. I suppose that by pane accident they 
‘were omitted from the latter, especially as no mention is made of Cultural 
