Poe ORCHID Rae 
MOL, ALY.) OCTOBER, 1906. [No. 166. 
DIES ORCHIDIANI. 
I HAVE just received a reminder that my notes have fallen into arrear, and 
looking back find nothing since last February. Happily, there is no lack of 
material, and it is pleasant to find that someone appreciatesthem. An event 
to which I then alluded was the coming Hybridisation Conference, and now 
the event is past, and reports in the last two issues of the Review show that 
the claims of Orchidology were not overlooked—indeed the Chairman in his 
opening address alluded to the worker who was “ engrossed and perhaps lost 
in the idiosyncrasies of Orchids,” and how he might be rescued by dis- 
coveries concerning Peas, or even Mice or Lepidoptera. And this reminds 
me that he alluded to the first Hybridisation Conference as having taken 
place eight years previously, in July, 1898. I had forgotten the date, but 
turning up the Report in my copy of the Review I find that it was seven 
years ago, in July, 1899. But I shall never forget the atmosphere in the 
big Vinery at Chiswick on that memorable occasion, and I alluded to it at 
the time as “like that of a Turkish bath.” A good many events have 
happened in the Orchid world since then, but I cannot. stop to allude to 
them, and with respect to the recent Conference it will suffice to say that 
the event passed off with great éclat, and every one appears to have been 
delighted with the proceedings generally. We shall now await the appear- 
ance of the Official Report with considerable interest. 
A year ago, more or less, we were all ina state of excitement over the 
“lost Orchid,” and while all else was doubtful one fact at least seemed 
certain, and that was that the plant in question was one known for nearly 
half a century as Cypripedium Fairrieanum, which originally appeared in 
the collection of Mr. Fairrie of Liverpool. It was, therefore, rather a 
Shock to be told that this was not the plant, after all, and that the real 
Simon—no, I mean ‘ Adam’s Fairrieanum” was something quite differ- 
€nt. Was not its portrait, painted at the time, still in existence ¢ And 
Was not the said portrait actually reproduced in the Review last April 
(P- 105), from a photograph, too, so that there should be no mistake. Were 
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