ORCHID CONFERENCE. 



445 



pale. On another occasion, however, he found a large colony of 

 Gentiana campestris, every one of which was an albino. These plants 

 must have been breeding true to an original, and most of them were 

 unusually vigorous. 



Major Hurst said it was very interesting to know that one or 

 two of these so-called albinos that they had been relying upon as 

 evidence had changed. He should be very glad indeed to follow up 

 that phase, because the special plant mentioned by Mr. Thwaites he 

 examined miost carefully, and had been unable to find any trace of 

 colour in it. There still remained a large number of albinos which 

 remained albinos throughout their lives. With regard to Mr. 

 Thwaites' suggestion as to the origin of white, there was the sport- 

 ing suggestion that white was due tO' the mixing of colours. When 

 they were dealing with pigments white had nothing to do with the 

 absence of colour. All they meant when they said an "Albino 

 Orchid " was that the sap colour was absent from the flower. He 

 had, in reading his paper, left out that portion which would have dealt 

 with the question because he thought Mr. Thwaites would deal with it. 

 But they would see his full paper (p. 422), so that they could com- 

 pare the different points of view. He was pleased to see that Mr. 

 EoLFE was coming round to their point of view ; for a long time 

 he would not have anything to do with Mendelism, or anything of 

 that kind. [Here Major Hurst gave portions of his tables referring 

 to albinos.] 



Mr. Fletcher asked how the results referred to in his paper by 

 Major Hurst were produced. 



Major Hurst said it had been proved by demonstration in the case 

 of sweet peas and stocks, and also in the cases of several other plants. 

 Of course in Orchids they could not raise albinos in thousands, but 

 in the case of the Belgian albinos, to which reference had been made, 

 he thought it was something like five to three. At any rate it was 

 quite near enough to those figures for practicaT purposes. 



Mr. Thwaites said that whether they differed at the present 

 moment as to the definition of albino was immaterial. His definition 

 was the dictionary one of white. 



Major Hurst said the definition of albino he had presented was 

 not his own, but was simply the definition that had grown up through 

 all the years of experience and practice in the Orchid world. For 

 growing and practical purposes the beauty and purity of an albino 

 depended upon the absence of purple or red colour. 



Mr. Bate SON called attention to the curious problem presented by 

 the distribution of colours in the varieties of Odontoglossum. In- 

 asmuch as the brown colours are evidently due to the combination of a 

 purple sap colour with a yellow (presumably due chiefly if not ex- 

 clusively to presence of yellow plastids), as in wallflowers, &c., it is 

 a paradox that brown spots may occur on a white ground. We should 

 expect either that all spots on a white ground would be purple, or 

 that if the spots were brown there would be yellow spots or yellow 



