264 THE ORCHID REVIEW. [SEPTEMBER, 1912. 
vegetative character, and cuts across whole groups of affinities, and we are 
therefore fully justified in assigning it to a subordinate position. 
The enormous number of minute seeds produced by Orchids, and the 
imperfect embryo, with the absence of nutritive tissue, or endosperm, are 
characters that invite remark, and are evidently connected with their method 
of existence. The seeds become increasingly numerous in the higher groups 
—in the case of Cycnoches chlorochilon it is estimated that the progeny 
of a single capsule, ‘if they all grew, would equal the population of London 
—and in the case of epiphytes the small proportion of seeds that are likely 
to find a suitable resting-place would naturally result in their production in 
vast profusion, and this in turn would lead to modifications in the economy 
of fertilisation. A large amount of pollen is necessary for the impregnation 
of the almost innumerable seeds, and the various modifications which were 
preserved, because useful to the plant, would naturally be correlated together. 
Another correlated and apparently unique character is seen in the 
immaturity of the ovary and ovules when the flowers expand, these only 
being developed after and as a result of pollination, fertilisation proper 
being delayed until a considerably later period. It is a kind of conservation 
of energy until the chain of events which leads to the production of the 
seeds is set in motion, and points to a cause which has operated from a 
remote period in the past. The long time that the flowers often remain 
open in the absence of pollination, and their quick withering after that 
event, is an arrangement that would tend to synchronise the flowering of 
the species with the appearance of its insect visitors, and the habit of 
certain Orchids of producing solitary or few flowers at intervals, and in 
strict succession, on the same inflorescence is evidently connected with the 
uncertainty of insect visits, so that if any given flower should fail to be 
pollinated others would follow to take its place. This character is well 
known in the Sarcochilus group and in Bulbophyllum section Intervallata. 
We have now seen that Orchids have been derived from more primitive 
monocotyledons, possessing fifteen floral organs, arranged in five whorls of 
three each, and that the profound changes that they have undergone are 
the result of varying degrées of cohesion, suppression, and modification of 
parts, these being adaptations to fertilisation by insects, under which a 
high degree of irregularity has been attained. And, as monocotyledons 
are now believed to have been derived from dicotyledonous ancestors, we 
may assign to Orchids a position of the highest rank among members 
of the vegetable kingdom, both by claims of long descent and by complexity 
of structure. Their beauty and interest are universally admitted, and thus 
we are fully justified in regarding them as the aristocrats of the vegetable 
world. R. A. RoLFE. 
_ HO 
