324 THE ORCHID REVIEW. 
DIES ORCHIDIAN&. 
AN interesting paper on ‘‘ Hybrid Orchids,” by Mr. James O’Brien, V.M.H.., 
appears in the last number of the Journal of the Royal Horticultural Soctety 
(pp. 178-185). It deals with the question largely from a cultural stand- 
point, but in the introductory portion contains some interesting remarks on 
the general aspect of the question. The author, as Honorary Secretary 
of the R.H.S. Orchid Committee for a number of years, has had the oppor- 
tunity of seeing the many beautiful hybrids which follow each other in 
rapid succession, and has been struck by the pointed examples which they 
give, and continually emphasise, of the good to be attained by diligent 
work. One of the advantages secured by the hybridist is the production 
of a large number of showy plants, giving variety at all seasons, and in 
some cases filling in the periods between the flowering seasons of different 
species, so as to secure a more continuous supply of flowers. Orchids under 
cultivation may often be found flowering out of their proper season, and 
the hybridist is thus enabled to effect crosses between species naturally 
flowering at different periods, of which it is remarked that the progeny 
generally flower midway between the proper time of flowering of the 
parents, with a slight inclination mostly towards the season of the seed 
parent. An instance, given in illustration of the point, is the series of 
hybrids raised by Messrs. James Veitch and Sons from Lelia Perrinii, as 
the seed-bearing parent, which has brought so many beautiful new plants 
flowering in the dead of winter. 
** But good and useful as the work of the Orchid hybridist has been, 
generally speaking,” remarks the author, ‘‘it has not supplied to us an 
altogether unmixed blessing, for in the great and easily worked genus 
Cypripedium a great many varieties have resulted either from unhappy 
crossts or from want of care in selecting the best varieties of the species 
used, the result being that the progeny are what may be regarded as weeds 
of their kind. The worst of it is that their originators do not regard them 
as weeds, and out of such failures spring a large proportion of the trouble- 
some synonyms which cause so much anxiety to the members of the Orchid 
Committee, who get found fault with if they recognise the erroneous names 
under which the plants are shown, or call down the vengeance of the 
exhibitors if they change them. The trouble coming from this direction 
makes one long for the day when raisers of hybrid Orchids will be ready to 
admit that such failures are not worthy to be retained, and to destroy them, 
after the manner customary among the raisers of other florists’ flowers.” 
I am glad to see attention once more called to this aspect of the question, 
for no one who knows anything about the matter will deny that the Orchid 
