REICHENBACHIA. VOL. I.-SECOND SERIES. Reichenbachia ORCHIDS ILLUSTRATED AND DESCRIBED F SANDER, • WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF SCIENTIFIC AUTHORITY. VOLUME I. SECOND SERIES. ST. ALBANS: F SANDER & CO., ORCHID GROWERS & IMPORTERS. LONDON: H. SOTHERAN & CO., 37, PICCADILLY, W. BERLIN : PAUL PAREY, 10, HEDEMANNSTR&SSE. PARIS: O. NILSSON, 12, RUE AUBER. UNITED STATES : ROBERT B. YOUNG & CO., 205, GREENWICH STREET, N.Y. THIS THE FIRST VOLUME OF THE REICHENBACHIA (SECOND SERIES) IS DEDICATED BY SPECIAL PERMISSION TO HER MAJESTY MARIA FEODOROVNA EMPRESS OF RUSSIA, BY HER MAJESTY'S MOST OBEDIENT SERVANT, FREDERICK SANDER. PROFESSOR DR. HEINRICH GUSTAV REICH EN BACH. DURING the issue of our second volume, the man whose genius suggested its title passed away. Reichenbach died on the 6th of May, 1889, aged 66 years. From the sympathetic sketch by Dr. Regel, published in the Gartenflora, we extract a brief record of his career. The great orchidologist was born in Dresden, January 3, 1824. From his father, the well-known botanist, Heinrich Gottlieb Reichenbach, he inherited the tastes and the industry which gave him a world-wide renown, and in 1845 the youth turned his chief attention to orchidology. Three years later his first work, Die europaischeu Orchideen, appeared, and in the following year he published his first contribution on Orchids in the Botauische Zeitnng. These articles continued until 1883. A close connection with the greatest botanical travellers enriched his knowledge and his herbarium ; to Dr. Lindley also, his personal friend, who, as he has often told us, allowed him free access to his collections at Acton Green, Reichenbach was much indebted. In 1852 he issued De pollinis Orcliidcarum gcncsi ac sir net lira et de Orchidcis in artem et systema redigensis, and in 1854 the first number of the Xcnia Orchidacea appeared. At Dr. Lindley's death, in 1865, he became the acknowledged authority on Orchids. Before that time he had begun that long series of descriptions and remarks upon newly-introduced orchids in the Gardeners' Chronicle, with which we are all familiar, and for nearly forty years he worked with unabated energy for his chosen science. The following extracts from an obituary notice by Dr. Maxwell T. Masters, in the Gardeners' Chronicle, May 18th, 1889, briefly sums up his life's work and history :— " It must not, however, be supposed from our remarks that Professor Reichenbach was exclusively an orchido- grapher. He is best known to horticulturists in this field, but botanists have to thank him for the zealous collaboration he gave to his father's grand undertaking—the Icones Florce Germanice et Helvctice—a work devoted to the description and illustration of the plants of Central Europe, and of which Heinrich Gustav Reichenbach, the younger, edited the latter volumes, and illustrated them with his own hand, contributing no fewer than 1500 drawings. The first volume of this extensive and valuable publication which Professor Reichenbach edited, was, naturally enough, that devoted to the orchids of Europe. It bears the title Tentamen Orchidographice Europece, and is dated 1851. ' For ten years,' says the Professor in the preface of that volume, ' I had devoted myself to the study of Orchids.' Since 1841, then, our Professor had most diligently studied Orchids, often in association with Lindley, who repeatedly acknowledged his obligations to the subject of this notice. In consequence it is scarcely possible to take up a set of volumes of periodical botanical litera• ture, German, French, or Eno-Hsh, or any work devoted to the enumeration of the floras of distant lands, without meeting traces of the Professor's industry and research. Our own columns in particular have been enriched with very numerous descriptions of the Orchids that have been from time to time introduced into cultivation. Of separate publications we may mention the well-known Xenia Orchidacea, which has appeared in occasional fascicles from 1851, with about 900 drawings from the Professor's pencil, and the Observations on the Orchids of Central America. Professor Reichenbach was also the author of the synopsis of Orchid lore contained in the sixth volume of Walpers Annates. ii. " He always took a lively interest in horticultural exhibitions, both on the Continent and in this country, and was frequently called on to act in the capacity of judge, especially where Orchids or new plants were concerned. At the several Horticultural and Botanical Congresses Professor Reichenbach generally took a prominent part. " Reichenbach was possessed of a distinct individuality, which was as remarkable as his curiously crabbed handwriting, which few could decipher. Short and, till his recent illness, massive in stature, with a keen, penetrating glance and aquiline nose, his features revealed something of the impetuous temper of the man, and of his occasional biting sarcasm. His devotion to Orchids amounted to a consuming passion; not a scrap, nor a note, nor a sketch however rough, came amiss to him if it related to an Orchid. To him meals and clothes were necessary evils, but his herbarium was a prime necessity of existence. The amount of his work was prodigious. Of its quality the botanists of the future will judge better than we. One thing, however, is obvious, and especially so to those who have had the opportunity of comparing his work with Lindley's. In Lindley's time Orchids were, it may be said, counted by the score, while in our times the estimate has to be made by the hundred, if not the thousand. Lindley, with his clear perception, logical mind, and relatively small material, was able to draw sharply defined, expressive characters in few words, arranged with rare skill. Reichenbach, with a totally different frame of mind, was overburdened with the ever-increasing mass of material. His descriptions and comparisons were often singularly felicitous, his knowledge of detail enormous, but lacking co-ordination and precision. He never gave us in a compendious form a complete synopsis of the genera and species. His immense collections and notes will require years of concentration for collation and revision, for his publications are not only extremely numerous, but scattered through a wide range of publications in almost all European languages. " Of his self-denying labours and the constant services he rendered to Orchid growers in all parts of the world we have already spoken. Some recognition, but none that can be fairly deemed adequate, was conferred on him in this country by his election as one of the foreign members of our Linnean Society; and as an honorary Fellow of the Royal Horticultural Society." Soon after these appreciative lines were penned, when all the botanists of Europe were wondering how the famous, the unique herbarium had been devised, an extract from Reichenbach's will was published in the Gardeners Chronicle. We quote the important part:— " My herbarium and my botanical library, my instruments, collection of seeds, &c, accrue to the Imperial- Hof Museum in Vienna, under the condition that the preserved Orchids and drawings of Orchids shall not be exhibited for twenty-five years from the date of my death have elapsed. Until this time my collection shall be preserved in sealed cases. In the event of the Vienna Institute declining to observe these conditions, the collection falls under the same conditions to the Botanical Garden at Upsala. Should the last-mentioned Institute decline the legacy, then to the Grayean Herbarium in Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. If declined by that Institute, then to the Jardin des Plantes, at Paris, but always under the same conditions, viz., of being sealed up for twenty-five years, in order that the inevitable destruction of the costly collection, resulting from the present craze for Orchids, may be avoided." It is not too much to say that savants all the world over were shocked by this selfish withdrawal of treasures which should, so far as it was possible, have i>een made common property for students. We will not dwell upon a painful memory. That Reichenbach, our honoured chief, should do his best, when dying, to check the progress of those studies to which he had given his life, is humiliating to our common nature. We in England must work on, recovering the stores of information which he has buried ;—and we shall succeed. Even if his specimens remain so well preserved as to be available for study, after their imprisonment for twenty-five years, the chances are that our labours during the same period will have rendered them obsolete. If it be needful to add a few words of the man personally, we must say that he was a delightful companion, amusing when most instructive, but never quite friendly. A certain irritability, not of temper but of nerves, arising perhaps from a severe illness in boyhood, checked all ease of communication. Those who admired his genius and his astonishing stores of knowledge found themselves unable to cheer that solitary life. They could never be sure of success whatever the attempt to please him. It must be feared that his life was not happy, in spite of scientific honours and renown such as few have won. Reichenbach had a longing for the distinctions which Courts confer, and was invested with several Orders ; his peculiar, sharp wit, irrepressible in any company, was, however, ill calculated to gain him royal favour. He never married. Dr. John Lindley, was the first specialist in Europe to take up the general systematic study of this royal family of plants. He devoted ten years, i.e., from April, 1830, to October, 1840, to the production of his " Genera and Species of Orchidaceous Plants," in which work 1980 species are referred to or described. The actual dried materials and M.S.