HYBRID ORCHIDS. 



179 



flowering at a similar time to their parents ; whilst Orchids under 

 cultivation may often be found in flower out of their proper 

 season, and by this means the manipulator is able not only to 

 effect crosses between plants naturally inhabiting totally different 

 localities, but between species naturally flowering at different 

 periods, of which the progeny generally flower midway between 

 the proper time of flowering of the parents with a slight inclina- 

 tion mostly towards the season of the seed-bearing plant. Many 

 instances of this kind might be given, but it will suffice to take 

 the hybrids raised by Messrs. Jas. Veitch & Sons, using Lcelia 

 Perrinii as a seed-bearing parent, and which have brought us 

 so many beautiful new plants flowering in the dead of winter. 



But good and useful as the work of the Orchid hybridist has 

 been, generally speaking, it has not supplied to us an altogether 

 unmixed blessing, for in the great and easily worked genus 

 Cypripedium a great many varieties have resulted either from 

 unhappy crosses or from want of care in selecting the best 

 varieties of the species used, the result being that, the progeny 

 are what may be regarded as weeds of their kind. The worst of 

 it is that their originators do not regard them as weeds, and out 

 of such failures spring a large proportion of the troublesome 

 synonyms which cause so much anxiety to the members of the 

 Orchid Committee, who get found fault with if they recognise the 

 erroneous names under which the plants are shown, or call down 

 the vengeance of the exhibitors if they change them. The trouble 

 coming from this direction makes one long for the day when 

 raisers of hybrid Orchids will be ready to admit that such failures 

 are not worthy to be retained, and to destroy them after the 

 manner customary among the raisers of other florist's flowers. 



Seed-bearing of Orchids in their Native Homes. 



By the hybridist and by those who have studied in gardens 

 the varied yet always elaborate structure of Orchid flowers the 

 theory of their fertilisation by insects is invariably accepted, and 

 anything said on the subject by those who have had the oppor- 

 tunity to observe the plants in a wild state is considered of great 

 interest. So far as my experience goes, the observer in the 

 tropics (with some few exceptions) invariably at the commence- 

 ment either denies the agency of insects in fertilising the 



