THE ORCHID REVIEW. 357 
DIES ORCHIDIAN. 
ANOTHER phase of the nomenclature question has just come to the front. 
Speaking of Cattleya chocoensis, Mr. F. C. Lehmann remarks :—‘“ In 
accordance to the laws of priority in naming and describing plants, I con- 
sider it high time that this plant should be referred to its original name, as 
given by Kunth.” (Gard. Chron., 1895, ii., p. 486.) Now,the name in 
question was Cymbidium candidum, and surely the writer does not seriously 
. propose that we should return to it. He himself writes Cattleya candida, 
and it must require a considerable stretch of the imagination before anyone 
can persuade himself that it is Kunth’s original. The fact is, it is a name 
proposed by Mr. Lehmann, and much more recent than the one which it is 
intended to supersede. Let us look it fairly and squarely in the face— 
“ Cattleya candida (Kth.), Lehm ”—a combination of the generic part of 
one old name, the specific part of another (which has proved to be 
erroneous), and the names of two different authors. And even all this does 
not enable anyone to find the plant in Kunth’s work. It must be written 
thus :—Cattleya candida (Cymbidium, Kth.), Lehm.—before affording a clue 
to what Kunth intended; and even then it is an absolutely new name, and 
no amount of ingenious phraseology will ever make it anything else. The 
point of the whole matter is that certain writers think it perfectly legitimate 
to hunt up all these obsolete, erroneous, and sometimes even forgotten 
names, form them into new combinations, add their own names as authority 
(this, by the way, being the most important part of the whole proceeding), 
and then think they have a perfect right to supersede the name of any 
author who merely describes a plant correctly for the first time in its proper 
genus. And all this they do under the specious pretence of securing 
stability in nomenclature. The Index Kewensis, I believe, has set its face 
against this sort of thing, and adopted the name of the author who first 
described a plant in its correct genus, which, at all events, is more conducive 
to stability than the rival system, and the only one capable of securing 
priority for the earliest correct name. It is the boast of one of this school 
of reformers that in order to secure this necessary stability he had to invent 
thirty thousand new names, and others have since added to the list. These 
men talk glibly of Callista nobilis, Angorchis sesquipedalis, Phyllorchis 
Medusz, &c. ; they have no Dendrobiums, Angrecum is not known in their 
vocabulary, and as to Cirrhopetalum, they never mention it, except among 
the obsolete and the degraded. The list of Orchids contains hundreds of 
other examples of the work of these wholesale reformers, who, I doubt not, 
will attempt to purify the English language when they have got their present 
little work off hand—which, happily, is not yet. 
e546 ‘return to Cattleya chocoensis—or Cymbidium candidum, if the 
