K ad THE ORCHID REVIEW. 
Whether he detected the aromatic fragrance is not known, but Salisbury’s 
specific name “‘ fragrans”’ is suggestive. How the flower became fertilized 
is equally uncertain—probably not by design. The next fact is that in 1812 
Parmentier obtained cuttings of the Paddington plant, which were confided 
to the care of Dr. Sommé, Director of the Antwerp Botanic Garden. 
There it grew rapidly, and slips were widely distributed in Belgium and 
France, where they flowered once or twice but never fruited. In 181g Dr. 
Sommé sent two plants to the Dutch Colonies of Java by M. Marchal, who 
with difficulty saved one. This flowered at Buitenzorg, but failed to fruit. 
Blume could hardly have known its history, for in 1825 he described it 
again as V. vividiflora. 
To return, however, Humboldt, in 1811 gave a detailed account of the 
Vanilla of commerce, without clearing up its botanical source, and in 1829 
Dr. Schiede gave further information, and described three economic species 
V. sylvestris, and V. sativa, which he thought had been confounded under 
the name of V. planifolia (and which are really the wild and cultivated 
forms of that species) and V. Pompona. A fourth, V. inodora, which he 
described as perfectly useless, being unscented, now proves to be V. 
aromatica, long supposed to be the source of true Vanilla. 
To Prof. C. Morren belongs the credit of first producing fruits in 
quantity, and of proving that V. planifolia was the source of the true 
Vanilla of commerce—a suggestion which had been thrown out by Schiede. 
By a particular method of culture he succeeded in producing 54 flowers on 
one plant, and by fertilising them artificially obtained the same number of 
pods. Next year he hada crop of 100 pods. His paper “On the produc- 
tion of Vanilla in Europe,” which was read before the British Association 
at Newcastle in 1838, was a very remarkable one, and he appears 
to have first pointed out the need for artificial fertilisation. Deltiel in 1872 
stated that it was first practised by Newmann, in 1830, in the Jardin des 
Plantes, but Morren does not mention it. Morren also traced the history 
of his plant back to the original one at Paddington, and its introduction to 
Java, above mentioned. ; 
Deltiel ascribes the present important industry in Réunion to plants 
obtained from Paris in 1822, which, judging by the history of the plants 
then cultivated on the Continent, probably also came from the Paddington 
plant. He also states that the plants thus introduced into Réunion proved 
sterile until about the year 1841 or 1842, when a slave named Edward 
Albius discovered a simple and rapid method of fertilising the flowers 
artificially, which has been practised ever since. It appears that in Mexico 
fertilisation is effected by small bees belonging to the genus Melipone, 
which visit the flowers for the sake of the honey they afford. 
Mr. Morris states that in British Honduras also the fruits hang in 
fine masses in the forest, diffusing a fragrance perceptible at a considerable 
