36 THE ORCHID REVIEW. 
There is much that is to the point in these remarks, but I see no 
difficulty of finding out the system. It has been briefly and effectively 
described as ‘‘ go-as-you-please.” We have rules, but no one to enforce 
them, and if ‘‘G.H.H.” can suggest a remedy he will be a benefactor 
to his race. 
Something like a bomb-shell descended at the R. H. S. meeting last 
Tuesday. I thought we knew everything about Phaius_ tuberculosus, 
except perhaps how to grow it, but at this meeting there were two 
rival claimants for the name. One was the plant with which we are 
all now familiar, exhibited by Sir Frederick Wigan, the other a very 
fair imitation of a tufted evergreen Calanthe, until one looked at the 
flowers, which were those—well, nearly those—of the well-known plant. 
One had to look more than once or twice before feeling suré about the 
differences. The terrestrial plant bore a card, signed by Mr. Rolfe, to 
the effect that this was the true and original Phaius tuberculosus, and 
and that the well-known epiphytal species was an impostor, without a 
name of its own, and he had therefore re-christened it Phaius simulans, 
in allusion to the remarkable resemblance in its flowers to those of the 
original species—perhaps one might add, in commemoration of its success- 
fully posing for some twenty years as the true plant. 
Here was a pretty to-do, and comments were naturally many and 
various. One didn’t thank Mr. Rolfe for his discovery, and another 
said he was always finding out something that ought to have been known 
years before. A third supposed that anyhow now the mistake had been dis- 
covered, we must correct it, and adopt the new names, which elicited 
the reply that of course we shouldn’t do anything of the sort: we all 
knew tuberculosus now, and should stick to it. Of course we had the 
opinion that both were tuberculosus, only one had taken to growing up 
tree-stems, and changed its habits accordingly—or was it that when it 
grew on the ground it became tufted? Another view that found some 
favour was that the new-comer was a natural hybrid between P. tuber- 
culosus and P. Humblotii, which accounted for the terrestrial tufted © 
habit and some differences in the crest. 
I merely record these facts and impressions, and leave the parties 
concerned to settle their differences. ‘It was the excitement of the 
meeting, and I fancy that M. Warpur’s introduction is a plant of con- 
siderable horticultural importance. 
ARGUS. 
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