NOVEMBER, 1903. | THE ORCHID REVIEW. 327 
a trace of the blotching of that hybrid in all its thirteen blooms. It is 
blooming on the sixth bulb of good size, and it is impossible to expect any 
alteration of colour or markings. I have the Wilckeanum still, but not the 
crispum ; but I remember it perfectly. 
The flower sent would certainly be taken for a good round form of 
O.crispum. The petals are an inch broad by 1} inches long, and clear 
white, while the sepals are 11 lines broad, tinged with rose, especially at 
the back, and there is a small purple spot in the centre of the dorsal sepal. 
‘The lip is 1 inch long by 9 lines broad, and the deep yellow disc is about 
half as broad as the limb, with the usual light brown streaks on either side 
of the claw, and a few slight traces of them on the crest. There are 
certainly minute teeth on the side lobes of the crest, but not larger than in 
some of the imported forms referred to O. crispum. The column wings 
are each broken up into about four prominent teeth, about a line long, with 
a few traces of smaller ones. Altogether we cannot find a single character 
which would suggest hybridity, any more than in many of the imported 
white forms which are referred without question to O. crispum. 
Mr. Crawshay remarks :-—“‘ This the second plant, and from a totally 
different crossing, that proves the great prepotency of O. crispum, when 
unspotted, as the seed-bearing parent to revert to itself. I failed to raise 
more than this one plant from this cross,” but he also alludes to the 
seedling, O.crispum X crispum Crawshayanum, exhibited at the R.H.S. 
meeting held on March toth last, as follows :—‘‘ That plant proved 
reversion even beyond my expectation, for a worse form of O. crispum 
could hardly be expected, and all trace of the great blotches of O. c. 
Crawshayanum was wiped out by the retrograde movement effected by 
Nature.” 
Mr. Crawshay must be congratulated on his persevering attempts to 
solve a very interesting and difficult biological problem, and on his success 
in flowering the first artificially raised O. crispum seedling, but it is difficult 
to accept the conclusions to which these experiments point, because they 
are not in complete accord with parallel cases in other groups. Mr. 
Crawshay, however, regards them as straws that show which way the wind 
blows, and adds :—“ Perhaps some day I may havea sheaf of them, or some 
other raiser may forestall me. I hope that if he should do so he will 
publish his results. Perhaps considerations of value of unbloomed 
seedlings may prevent these failures coming to light, but I consider that 
the great value of ‘ blotched crispums’ is more than ever assured by these 
failures to produce them artificially.” 
We do not anticipate that the various attempts to produce blotched 
crispums. artificially will all end in failure, but whatever the result we hope 
to have the main facts faithfully recorded. 
