AUGUST, 1913.] THE ORCHID REVIEW. 247 
ODONTIODA BRADSHAWI#.—To Mr. J. Collier, gardener to Sir Jeremiah 
Colman, Bart., for a very fine specimen, bearing two immense panicles of 
scarlet flowers. 
ORCHIDS OF SOUTH NIGERIA. 
WE have received from the Trustees of the British Museum a copy of the 
Catalogue of the Plants collected by Mr. and Mrs. P. A. Talbot in the Oban 
district of South Nigeria, by Dr. A. B. Rendle, M.A., and others, with a 
short account of the district and the general character of the vegetation by 
Mr. Talbot. The Oban district lies within the bend of the Cross River, at 
a distance of 40 to 100 miles from the Gulf of Guinea, and is bounded on 
the east by the German Cameroons, of which it is botanically an offset. It 
is very undulating, with an altitude of 300 to goo feet, and masses of hills 
towards the centre forming a clearly marked watershed nearly 4000 feet 
high. The annual rainfall averages 175 inches, and the great humidity 
results in a very luxuriant vegetation. The forests are predominently 
evergreen, though with a large proportion of deciduous trees. The number 
of species in these forests is said to be immense, and the collection dealt 
with contains 1016 species and varieties, including seventy Orchids, of 
which twenty are described as new. Their affinity is almost exclusively 
West Tropical African, and a considerable proportion occur also in the 
Cameroons, with a few more widely distributed through West Tropical 
Africa. The novelties comprise seven Angrecums, six Bulbophyllums, 
four Polystachyas, and a single species each of Vanilla, Platylepis, and 
Habenaria. Their principal characters are illustrated in a series of four 
useful plates. The novelties are described separately, but the whole of the 
species collected are enumerated in a systematic list at the end of the work- 
A glance through this shows about twenty that we have met with in cultiva- 
tion, but few of them are showy, the chief exceptions being Angreeum cauda- 
tum, Eichlerianum and Chailluanum, Ansellia africana and Ancistrochilus 
Thomsonsianus. There is one matter to which we must take exception, 
namely the inclusion of Listrostachys and Mystacidium in Angrecum. It 
is not our experience that ‘‘affinity deduced from general characters is at 
variance with that deduced from the single character of the pollinia and 
their appendages,” nor yet that ‘species obviously closely allied’ are 
“artificially separated on this criterion.” The marked __rostellar 
differences in these genera are no mere artificial characters, and we find 
Saccolabium more difficult to separate from Angraecum by absolute 
characters. In fact Angraecum imbricatum has been: described as a new 
Saccolabium which shows that resemblances are not always affinities. 
‘There is one other consideration, namely that this reversion to an old 
arrangement leaves the American genera of the group with nothing to 
