worm were discovered in the contents of the abscess.--_Lancet_.

* * * * *




THE SPECTRAL MASDEVALLIA.

(_M. chimaera_.)


Of all orchids no genus we can just now call to mind is more distinct or
is composed of species more widely divergent in size, form, structure,
and color than is this one of Masdevallia. It was founded well nigh a
century ago by Ruiz and Pavon on a species from Mexico, M. uniflora.
which, so far as I know, is nearly if not quite unknown to present day
cultivators. When Lindley wrote his "Genera and Species" in 1836, three
species of Masdevallias only were known to botanists but twenty-five
years later, when he prepared his "Folio Orchidaceae," nearly forty
species were; known in herbaria, and to-day perhaps fully a hundred
kinds are grown in our gardens, while travelers tell us of all the
gorgeous beauties which are known to exist high up on the cloud-swept
sides of the Andes and Cordilleras of the New World. The Masdevallia
is confined to the Western hemisphere alone, and as in bird and animal
distribution, so in the case of many orchids we find that when any genus
is confined to one hemisphere, those who look for another representative
genus in the other are rarely disappointed. Thus hornbills in the East
are represented by toucans in the West, and the humming bird of the West
by the sunbird of the East, and so also in the Malayan archipelago.