6 THE ORCHID REVIEW. 
DIES ORCHIDIANZE= 
AT last! the locality where Swainson collected the fine old Cattleya labiata 
over eighty years ago has been discovered, as I learn by the very interesting 
article at page 362 of your last issue. It is certainly a remarkable 
circumstance that the much desired information should have been on record 
all the time, and some of the collectors must have read the article with 
mixed feelings. We have been told that probably there is not one of the 
large dealers, in England or on the continent, dead or living, who has not 
spent money—a large sum too—in searching for the plant ; that collectors 
have struck a path through almost every province of Brazil, and also 
searched the neighbouring countries of Venezuela and Colombia, but with- 
out result, until about ten years ago, when, quite accidently someone 
stumbled across it at Pernambuco — where, mirabile dictu, Swainson 
originally discovered it. I wonder what that information would have been 
worth twenty years ago. 
It is interesting to find that the parentage of another natural hybrid has 
been proved. The appearance of Lelio-cattleya x Gottoiana some ten 
years ago came as a surprise, and it is a curious circumstance that it should 
have led to the discovery of the habitat of Cattleya Warneri, which up till 
then was credited to a quite different locality. The hybrid first appeared 
in an importation of Lelia tenebrosa, when its origin seemed inexplicable, 
and afterwards in an importation of Cattleya Warneri, and the circumstance 
ofits being intermediate between the two indicated pretty clearly its origin. 
‘Mr. Douglas soon afterwards crossed the two species together, and the 
resulting seedlings agree so far with the wild type as to place the matter 
beyond dispute. The list of natural hybrids with proved parentage seems 
. to be growing steadily, and has received several additions of late. 
There is another matter which points to the rapid progress which hybrid- 
ization is making amongst us, and that is the constant stream of novelties 
which appear—so numerous that some of them scarcely receive notice, and 
make it almost impossible to keep in touch with all that is going on. It is 
suggested by a correspondent that the compilation of an Orchid Stud Book 
would be useful to Orchidists in the future. Such a work, however, would 
involve several difficulties, and one of the greatest would be to know what 
to include. It is urged that, as the numbers increase, we must have a 
process of rigid selection, and the question is, on whom the responsibility of 
such selection should rest. It is Proposed to limit it, in the first place, to 
those hybrids which have received the award of a First-class Certificate at 
the meetings of the Royal Horticultural Society and the Manchester 
