May, 1912.] THE ORCHID REVIEW. 14 
crispum Stevenii) recalls a giant Ruckerianum, having rosy sepals, and 
only a few spots on the petals and white lip. Two forms of O. warnhamense 
(Pescatorei X Hallii) vary greatly in size, and the best is a really charming 
thing. There is also a good blotched crispum that should be taken care of 
a fine form of ©. Phoebe, a fine dark O. Charlesworthii (triumphans X 
Harryanum). a form of O. Clytie, and two charming forms of O. 
Lambeauianum (crispum X armainvillierense). Three others are of 
doubtful parentage, two being seedlings of O. Adriane with the flowers 
copiously blotched with dark purple. They may be forms of O. Solon 
(Adriane X armainvillierense). A beautiful yellow hybrid, with a few brown 
spots on the sepals, was obtained from a yellowish flower of crispum shape 
crossed with a deep yellow form, probably loochristiense, for the triumphans. 
column wings are unmistakable. Lastly there is a sulphur yellow seedling 
of crispum shape, but, unfortunately, of doubtful parentage, which should be 
taken care of: Mr. Stevens also includes a ten-flowered spike of a good 
typical O. crispum that has been in the collection for forty-two years, a very 
interesting plant. 
FALSE HYBRIDS. 
I HAVE been much interested in reading the remarks on false hybrids in 
Orchids in the Orchid Review for February (pp. 37, 38). Last summer I visited 
Dr. Jacques Loeb in his Laboratory at Woods Hole, and he showed me 
drawings of hybrid Echinoderm larve, remarking that when the cross was 
made between very diverse forms, the resulting larve were always 
exclusively of the maternal type. It simply came to this, that the sperm 
cell produced two kinds of effect upon the egg, one causing it to develop, 
the other transmitting the parental qualities. The first event could very 
well happen without the other, and hence “false hybrids.” Dr. Loeb has 
a most illuminating account of the general facts, with a chemical discussion, 
in a paper “On the Chemical Character of the Process of Fertilisation and 
its bearing upon the theory of Life Phenomena,” issued as an advance print 
from the Proceedings of the Seventh International Zoological Congress, 
and published at Cambridge, Mass. I think Loeb’s conclusions would be 
of great interest to Orchid breeders, and would, perhaps, suggest some good 
experiments. Loeb suggests, among other things, that the chemistry of 
the processes of germination in seeds is essentially analogous to that of 
fertilisation (he uses fertilisation here only for the processes involved in 
growth and development, without reference to the transmission of 
characters). As it appears that an enzyme develops in seeds which, with 
free oxygen, assists the process of germination, it seems barely possible that 
an extract of germinating seeds, or seeds about to germinate, when applied 
to an unfertilised flower of the same species, would set up developmental 
