XXXI.— THE SWEET-SCENTED ORCHID. 
Gymnadenia conopsea R. Brown. 
A lthough he was not the author of any popular book, and his name is 
unknown to the general public, Robert Brown amply earned the title 
“ Botanicorum facile princeps,” bestowed upon him by Humboldt, by the variety, 
profundity, and importance of his researches. In no group of plants does a student 
realise the indebtedness of the science to Brown more than in the study of the 
Orchidacea. 
Brown was born at Montrose in 1773 and studied at Aberdeen and Edinburgh. 
He was for a short time an army-surgeon ; but in 1801 was appointed naturalist to 
Flinders’ Australian Expedition, from which he returned in 1805 with some 4,000 
species of plants, mostly new to science. He then became librarian to Sir Joseph 
Banks and to the Linnean Society, and Banks on his death in 1820 bequeathed to 
him all his collections for his lifetime. They were, however, transferred by him to 
the British Museum, he becoming at the same time the first Keeper of the Botanical 
Department of the Museum, a post which he retained until his death in 1858. 
Brown was the first systematic botanist to combine the study of histology or 
microscopic anatomy with that of the more external characters upon which we base 
cur classifications of plants. Not only did he discover the nucleus of the cell, but 
he also traced the structure and development of the ovule, the naked character of 
that of Gymnosperms, the coats, and the embryo-sac, and the main differences in 
that of Monocotyledons and Dicotyledons. No one had previously recognised the 
real significance of homology, or developmental identity, as distinguished from mere 
analogy, or external resemblance of form ; and it was the influence of his careful 
analyses of structure in various difficult groups, such as Orchidace<e , that established 
the Natural System, in place of the artificial system of Linnaeus, in England and in 
Germany. He worked out, as they had never been worked out before, the principle 
of symmetry in the flower, the method by which the relative position of its parts can 
be localised, and the explanation of the partial or complete loss of symmetry by the 
abortion or suppression of some parts or the unilateral growth of others. It was in 
1831 that he first explained the general structural plan of the flowers of Orchids, 
tracing the vascular bundles of each of the fifteen floral leaves, recognising the 
inversion of the flower by the twisting of the ovary, and the putting out of pollen- 
tubes by the pollen-grains aggregated in pollinia. In the course of his anatomical 
study of the Family, Brown found it necessary to establish five new genera among 
British Orchids, of which Gymnadenia is one. We now recognise, in all, some 43 
British species of the Family, in 18 genera, several species being, however, very rare } 
if not extinct. 
Gymnadenia (from the Greek yu/xt-d?, gumnos , naked ; aSrjv, aden , a gland) is 
named from the fact that its two retinacula , or glands at the base of the pollinia which 
