FEBRUARY, 1903.] THE ORCHID REVIEW. 45 
evidence that a second species grew there, between which and callosum 
you considered siamense to be intermediate.—0O. tis Mi;'p. 20. 
“A year later you figured the plant with its two supposed parents, 
and asked some of our hybridists to demonstrate experimentally what must 
now be obvious to everyone, by crossing the two species together.—O. R., 
iV., pp. 17, 38, fie. te 
‘Shortly afterwards you announced that I had undertaken the task, 
fortunately having both species in flower.—O. R., iv, P- 39. 
‘In 1897 progress was reported: on January 15th, 1896, two flowers of 
P. Appletonianum were fertilised with pollen of P. callosum ; on December 
16th following the pods were ripe and the seeds sown on a pot of P. x 
Harrisianum ; on August 7th, 1897, my gardener, Mr. Poyntz, had pointed 
Out quite a crop of seedlings, so that in due time the theory stood a very 
fair chance of being verified.—O. R., v, p. 288. 
““ Lastly, two years later, you mentioned having seen these particular 
seedlings, which ‘ it was believed would prove the parentage of P. x 
siamense.’—O. R., vii, p. 276. 
‘“‘ Here is the final result.” REGINALD YouNG. 
Mr. Young has certainly reproduced P. x siamense, for his seedlings: 
agree thoroughly with the wild plant, and he deserves the thanks of 
botanists for his painstaking and successful efforts to solve one of the 
many perplexing problems which keep cropping up, and not among 
Orchids only, as I pointed out in my paper, ‘ Hy bridisationviewed from: 
the standpoint of systematic Botany,’ read at the Hybridisation Conference. 
How many natural hybrids have been described as species it would be 
impossible to say, but fortunately facts are steadily accumulating. In the 
present case Mr. Young might have extended the history further, as. 
follows :— : 
In 1890 P. X siamense was described by Rolfe as a new species, under 
the name of Cypripedium siamense, from a plant which had been introduced 
from the neighbourhood of Bangkok, in Siam, by M. J. Garden, of Paris.— 
Gard. Chron., 1899, i, p- I6r. 
Still earlier, in 1888, Reichenbach described the same thing as Cypri- 
pedium callosum var. subleve, from a plant which flowered out of a batch 
of P. callosum, in the collection of R. H. Measures, Esq., of Streatham. 
It may be interesting to reproduce the original figures, and on looking 
at them it is not quite clear why siamense was ever considered as a. 
variety of callosum. And an original remark by Reichenbach is rather 
inexplicable. He wrote :—‘ It [callosum var. subleve] might be supposed 
to be a natural hybrid, but I do not believe it. . . . M. Regnier would 
have brought the other parent.” This looks like a suspicion of the truth, 
