264 THE ORCHID REVIEW. 
tures are kept rather below the average, by the admission of plenty of fresh 
air. The bottom ventilators are constructed of perforated iron, which 
serves to filter the air, and thus prevent cold draughts, while at the same 
time they can be opened to any amount, little or great, according to the 
State of the weather. The syringe is used freely on warm sunny afternoons 
without any ill effects, and no manure of any kind is used. The plants 
generally are exceedingly well grown and healthy, and Mr. Winn attributes 
much of his success to the constant admission of fresh air whenever the 
outside conditions permit, in conjunction with moderate temperatures and 
careful attention in the important matters of potting and watering. The 
collection is one of our oldest ones, though at the same time one of the 
most interesting, being well to the front in the comparatively modern work 
of hybridisation, and Mr. Winn may certainly be congratulated on its 
excellence. 
—<—<$<$< Oo 
CYPRIPEDIUM CHARLESWORTHII. 
When the beautiful Cypripedium Charlesworthii was originally described 
in our pages, at pp. 303 and 355 of the last volume, it was little suspected 
that within a year it would be flowering in almost every collection of note, 
and yet so abundant has it become through the enormous importations 
which have been made, by three different firms, that this is what has taken 
place. At the Meeting of the Royal Horticultural Society on August r4th, 
Messrs. Hugh Low and Co., of Clapton, exhibited a magnificent group of 
sixty plants in flower, which fully justified all we predicted respecting it, 
except that it has proved to be a summer-flowerer instead of an autumn 
one. We are now in a position to judge better of its merits, and next to its 
undoubted beauty the thing which particularly strikes us is the amount of 
variability it presents in the colouring of the dorsal sepal. The amount of 
white marbling varies considerably in different flowers, in two or three of 
the darkest being almost absent, as in our coloured plate. From this it 
gradually increased in amount down to the lightest forms, even predominat- 
ing in two or three instances, where the colour was chiefly confined to the 
nerves. The depth of the rose colour also varies considerably, in one or 
two cases being almost of a pale lilac-rose tint, these being chiefly those in 
which the white predominates. Two or three dark forms were almost 
identical with our plate. The porcelain white staminode is very remarkable. 
It is perhaps not less useful flowering in August than two months later, as 
was the case last season, which probably arose from the check it received by 
being imported just when it was. Hybridists are now busy with it and a 
few years hence we may see some surprises. The marvel is that so beauti- 
ful a species should not have been discovered before. 
