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THE ORCHID REVIEW. Tit 
these crosses, and sooner or later success would attend their efforts. It is 
not at all hopeless to try, for seven distinct artificial hybrids have now 
flowered, and some have been raised more than once. Mr. Crawshay asks 
me to tell him how to germinate the seeds in greater quantity, but I can 
only recommend him to persevere, make plenty of crosses, and sow the 
seeds under various conditions. Ina wild state they must cross with the 
greatest freedom, and the seeds must germinate freely, or they would not 
be so numerous among imported plants. Mr. Crawshay has a few seedlings 
already, and I hope they are from crosses which will elucidate the point 
under discussion. 
If secondary hybrids do occur in the Bogota district, some of them 
ought to be derived from three species, and sooner or later it ought to be 
possible to recognise them. Hence I have been on the look out for some 
time, but without much, if indeed any, success. The great majority, at all 
events, seem to be primary hybrids, and their parentage can be easily 
recognised. Mr. Crawshay sent me O. X Andersonianum platychilum as a 
possible secondary hybrid, but I think that it is quite half gloriosum in 
everything but the broad lip, and the latter seems due to the crispum 
character coming out more strongly there than elsewhere. A few well- 
conducted experiments would probably throw a flood of light on this 
question, and our hybridists should take the matter in hand. Some of the 
crosses above suggested are probably worth making, quite apart from the 
botanical question involved, and would probably yield new and distinct 
forms, for it can scarcely be that all of them occur wild, even if some of 
them do, 
At all events, until the results of such experiments are forthcoming we 
must continue to make out the various intermediate forms as best we can, 
after comparison with the wild species with which they occur, making due 
allowance for polymorphism, and for the preponderating influence which 
one parent sometimes seems to obtain over the other. Had Epiphronitis 
X Veitchii, for example, appeared as a wild plant, who would have 
ascertained its origin by any process of comparison ? 
In connection with this question, Mr. I. Ireland, of Handsworth, 
Sheffield, has sent me a painting, by Miss Harvey, of a plant which flowered 
in the collection of the late Enoch Harvey, Esq., of Riversdale, Liverpool, 
in 1883. It appeared among some imported plants of O. crispum purchased 
from Messrs. Shuttleworth, Carder and Co., of Clapham, and a flower was 
submitted for determination to Prof. Reichenbach, who replied that it was 
One of the finest O. x Wilckeanums that had yet come under his notice, 
and requested the whole spike for his Herbarium, which was accordingly 
apes after the painting was made. The plant appears to have been rather 
- pom, and the inflorescence carried four flowers, measuring 3% inches across 
