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. Yeitch & Sons, using Lcdia 
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 
