100 THE ORCHID REVIEW. 
culture of Phalznopsis, but the latest essay on that subject is perhaps the 
most startling which I have yet had the good or ill fortune to come across. 
Writing from the Java Botanical Gardens on the promising subject of “ the 
Phalznopsis at home,’’ Mr. W. T. Lefebre, in the Gardeners’ Chronicle, 
remarks :—‘‘I venture to think that in Europe a Cattleya house is not fit 
for Phalznopsis, that, for instance, an Odontoglossum house would do 
better, and that growing them under cooler conditions will ensure greater 
success.”” Can the writer be aware of the temperature of our Odonto- 
glossum houses? The following notes are more to the purpose :—“‘ In 
places where Phalznopsis grows abundantly, the temperature never exceeds 
75° Fahr. in the daytime; it falls to 55° at night (Aug.). Most plants 
bloom from October till May, and some do not stop flowering at all during 
the dry months (in West Java damp weather prevails). The trunks to 
which their roots cling are amply mossed, the atmosphere being moist ; one 
handful of that heterogeneous mass of rotten leaves, bark débris, &c., seems 
sufficient for a whole group of them. They are partially shaded for a few 
hours daily (in the morning); they bear sunshine very well. They seldom 
occur in the gloomy and moist forests, . . . but always in open places, 
often amidst thin-crowned single trees, which admit the full light, or in old 
coffee groves (a number of them were growing on the coffee trees them- 
selves). I believe these conditions are substantially in agreement with 
the practice of our most successful cultivators. 
I further note that Phalznopsis grandiflora is said to have been “found 
first by Dr. Blume in Java, 2,000 feet above sea-level.”” Now I have always 
understood that it was known long before Blume’s time, and on consulting 
the authorities my impressions are confirmed. Rumphius detected it in 
the island of Amboyna, and published an account of it in his Herbariwn 
Amboinense as long ago as 1750, though under another name. And two 
years later Osbeck discovered it on New Island, at the western extremity 
of Java, and brought specimens home, which were forwarded to Linnzus, 
and described in his famous Species Plantarum, in 1753, as Epidendrum 
amabile. Osbeck was on his voyage home from China, and touching there, 
essayed to land in a boat, though the water was so full of corals that he had 
to be carried ashore by his people up to their breasts in water. On landing 
he was rewarded by finding this beautiful Orchid growing on the branches 
of trees on the shore. ‘‘ The plant,” he remarks, ‘ hath great white odori- 
ferous flowers such as I never observed before.” Horsfield found it in 1 809, 
at no great distance from the ocean, and even Blume met with it ‘in woods 
near the coast.” His account was published in 1825, three-quarters of a 
century at least after its original discovery. Phalznopsis amabilis was the 
name adopted, the new genus commemorating its fancied resemblance to a 
