THE ORCHID REVIEW. 233 
which Orchidic babyhood is heir to. A vulgar slug may devour the dainty 
morsel at a single meal, and we believe that a single insignificant thrip, if 
it gets into the growing point of a young Odontoglossum, will injury it 
beyond recovery. We may hope that some of Mr. Crawshay’s experiments 
will be crowned with success. 
Mr. Crawshay likes to be able to preserve the characters of his favourites, 
and to compare those together which flower at different seasons of the year. 
To this end he has developed a system of drying the flowers, all in their 
natural shapes, and in most cases with but slight diminution of their 
brilliant colours. This is effected by simply drying the flowers in sand, and 
afterwards arranging them in shallow cabinet drawers, something like a 
collection of butterflies. An inspection of this collection of dried flowers 
afforded the writer quite as much pleasure as that of the living ones in the 
houses, and enabled him to carry away such an impression of the collection 
as without it could only have been obtained by several visits at different 
periods of the year. Laelia x Crawshayana, for example, was not in 
flower, yet on retiring to Mr. Crawshay’s study every one of its characters 
could be inspected at leisure, the shape and markings of the flower, and even 
the colour, almost as easily as in the living flower. And the same may be 
said of nearly all the before-mentioned plants except the fleshy Vandas, etc. 
Of Odontoglossum crispum he has upwards of 150 dried flowers. It is 
remarkable how little changed are many of the flowers; even the teeth of 
the crest and wings of the column being as perfect as when alive, and the 
flowers of Odontoglossum x Wilckeanum and O. crispum De B. Crawshay 
are almost lifelike. 
The modus operandi is so simple that it ought to be more widely known. 
All that is necessary is some clean sharp dry sand and a box of some kind. 
The ovary is cut off to facilitate drying, and the flower is then placed on a 
layer of sand half an inch deep, and the box gradually filled to a depth of at 
least two inches, so as to prevent shrivelling. The sand must be gently 
filtered in, so as to preserve the natural shape of the flower. The box is 
then placed in some warm and dry place for a few days, when the operation 
is complete, and the sand may be filtered out again. The chief drawback 
to this system is that the dried flowers take up a large amount of space, i 
cannot be placed between sheets of paper like herbarium specimens. Un- 
fortunately, fleshy owers, such as Lycastes, and many others, lose their 
colours just the same as in the ordinary method, and the only advantage the 
present system has in the case of fleshy flowers is that they can be dried 
with breaking the parts, which is almost unavoidable when pressing them 
between sheets of paper. Perhaps a combination of the two systems would 
give the best results, for fleshy flowers which have been dried in sand can 
afterwards be flattened without breakage, if placed for a few minutes in 
warm water. But the advantage of being able to preserve flowers, and to 
