NOTES ON SOME CURIOSITIES OF ORCHID BREEDING. 457 



good forms of each parent variety (i.e. D. n. nobilius and D. n. 

 Cooksoni), and a series of forms grading down to ordinary D. 

 nobile." (Orch. Bev. iii. p. 168.) " In the progeny, all of 

 which bear very fine flowers, no two are alike : a few are almost 

 identical with D. n. Cooksoni, ... a few are richly coloured like 

 D. n. nobilius, one is a fine white near to D. n. Schroderianum, 

 and all the forms and all the shades of colour are represented." 

 (Gard. Ghron. March 28, 1896, p. 391.) 



We know from importations recently made by Messrs. 

 Sander & Co. (" Lang Tang " vars.) that all these varieties of 

 D. nobile grow together in their native home, and therefore it is 

 reasonable to suppose that they frequently intercross, making 

 their history a very mixed one. We cannot, therefore, be surprised 

 at the result of Mr. Cookson's experiment : their history being 

 so varied, their offspring tend to be as variable, the mixing by 

 crossing and the unmixing by many nuclear divisions causing 

 true reversions to occur from time to time. 



Many curiosities of Orchid breeding have come to light during 

 the past few years, but they are getting so numerous now that 

 familiarity with them has bred indifference if not contempt. 

 For instance, the raising of Odontoglossum seedlings used to be 

 considered a rare curiosity, but recently more than half-a-dozen 

 have flowered, and we hear of numbers of seedlings fast growing 

 to maturity. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the 

 flowering of Odontoglossum hybrids raised by hand is the direct 

 proof that they afford of the parentage of certain natural hybrids ; 

 and Mr. R. A. Rolfe, of Kew, has been making a special study of 

 this interesting question with valuable results. Thus 0. 

 crispum ? x 0. luteopurpureum raised by M. Leroy for Baron 

 Rothschild, of Paris, has proved the parentage of 0. x 

 Wilckeanum ; Messrs. Veitch's 0. nobile ? x 0. triumphans 

 proved the parentage of 0. x excellens ; and Messrs. Linden's 

 0. x cirrhosum ¥ x 0. Hallii that of 0. x elegans. While, 

 on the other hand, we have the beautiful 0. x crispo-Hallii 

 raised by Mr. Cookson which cannot occur in a wild state, one 

 parent growing in Colombia and the other in Ecuador. 



The chief difficulty hitherto found in raising Odontoglossums 

 has been the rearing of the seedlings. I myself have had 

 thousands of good seeds which germinated but gradually died off. 



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