Owing to the fact that Hooker wrote the admirable and favourable review of the Origin of Species which appeared in the Gardeners' Chronicle, it has been inferred that Lindley himself was not very well disposed toward the new theories; but Lord Lindley states that his father was much impressed by the Origin, said it would revolutionise botanical studies but that there were difficulties which would require elucidation before Darwin's theory could be regarded as completely satisfactory—surely a perspicacious judgment.
To turn to the woodcuts of The Vegetable Kingdom affords both pleasure and relief—pleasure on account of their excellence, relief to escape from the monotonous prettiness of modern process work.
Though space will not allow reference to other text-books and to innumerable minor publications—many of which may be found in the Lindley Library in the Royal Horticultural Society's headquarters at Vincent Square—a brief mention must be made of the Botanical Register. This periodical was founded in 1815, and so early as 1823 Lindley became a contributor to it; but it was not till 1829 that his name appeared on the title-page. From that time he was sole editor till 1847, when the Botanical Register ceased to appear; unable doubtless to stand against the Botanical Magazine which under the editorship of Hooker had passed from a moribund state into one of remarkable vigour which now, 125 years after its foundation, it still enjoys.
Orchids.
The magnitude of Lindley's work among his favourite group of plants, the Orchidaceae, deserves recognition by the general botanist. Botanical knowledge with respect to the group was in a very rudimentary stage when Lindley took up its study. Robert Brown and Blume were already engaged upon the investigation of orchids, but they relied mainly on herbarium material. Lindley, on the other hand, began with living plants and ended with living plants, though, as his herbarium testifies, he did not neglect dried specimens. A circumstance that favoured Lindley in these studies was the fact that William Cattley, an early patron of Lindley, was one of the most successful of the early cultivators of epiphytic orchids.
The chief of Lindley's published contributions to the knowledge of orchids, apart from scattered figures and descriptions in the Botanical Register, the Gardeners' Chronicle, Lindley and Paxton's Flower Garden, the Journal of the Linnean Society, and in other serials and periodicals, are to be found in The Genera and Species of Orchidaceous Plants, 1830-1840, in which are described all the species (1980) known of 299 genera; Sertum Orchidaceum (1838); Folia Orchidacea, 1852-1855; and The Vegetable Kingdom.
It is unfortunate that no attempt has as yet been made to catalogue the species described by Lindley; but with regard to genera an approximate list of those proposed by him may be attempted, and is interesting as giving some idea of the extent and value of Lindley's investigations in the group.
In the third edition of The Vegetable Kingdom he estimates the number of orchid genera at 469. Bentham and Hooker (Genera Plantarum, 1883) admit 334, and new genera proposed since that date amount to 125. Pfitzer (Engler and Prantl, Natürlichen Pflanzen-familien, 1889) describes 410.
The following is a list of Lindley's genera, admitted by Bentham and Hooker, in the sequence in which they appear in the Genera Plantarum:
Physosiphon
Brachionidium
Oberonia
Oreorchis
Sunipia
Cirrhopetalum
Megaclinium
Trias
Drymoda
Monomeria
Panisea
Acrochaene
Coelia
Eria
Phreatia
Chysis
Anthogonium
Earina