middle one broad, bilobed, generally with an intermediate tooth. The middle segment varies in the depth of its fissures, so that many authors have described the lip as four-cleft, and others as five-cleft; but, when this is the case, the segments are never so regularly linear as in the following species, and they are notched; and, besides, the petals are broader and not nearly so acuminate.
Orchis militaris.Eng. Bot. t. 1873.
Though this plant is figured by the old herbalists Gerard, Johnson, and Parkinson, it does not appear to have been noticed as a distinct species by any English writer, until it was taken up by Sir J. E. Smith in the 27th volume of English Botany. In this work, however, it is confounded with another, the O. tephrosanthos of Swartz. The figure which Johnson gives of it, p. 216, no. 13. is a tolerable similitude, and leaves little doubt as to what he intended. Parkinson has copied it, p. 1344, no. 8. and has added another of a most fanciful and ridiculous kind, p. 1347, which seems to have had its origin in this species or the following. Merett in his Pinax tells us that Mr. Brown, one of the authors of the Catalogus Oxoniensis, and whom he calls in his preface "vir exercitatissimus et eruditissimus," found three Orchides "near the highway from Wallingford to Reading, on Barkshire side the river.
"1. Orchis anthropophora autumnalis. Col. mas. C. B. et P. 1347[1]. The Man Orchis.
"2. Orchis anthropophora orcades altera. Col. p. 318.
"3. Orchis oreades trunco pallido, brachiis et cruribus saturate rubescentibus."
The O. militaris, E. B. t. 1873 and O. tephrosanthos are probably intended by these descriptions, since the former is found at
- ↑ This reference to Bauhine I do not understand thoroughly, but suppose it to refer to his Orchis flore nudi hominis effigiem representans, mas. — Pin. p.82.
