Notably in Borneo we find bolbophyls without pseudo bulbs, and with
solitary or few flowered scapes and other traits singularly suggestive
at first sight of the Western Masdevallia. Thus some bolbophyl, for
example, have caudal appendages to their sepals, as in Masdevallias,
and on the other hand some Masdevallias have their labellums hinged
and oscillatory, which is so commonly the case as to be "almost
characteristic" in the genus Bolbophyllum or Sarcopodium. Speaking
generally, Masdevallias, coming as most of them do from high altitudes,
lend themselves to what is now well known as "cool treatment," and
cultivators find it equally necessary to offer them moisture in
abundance both at the root and in the atmosphere, also seeing that when
at home in cloud-land they are often and well nigh continually drenched
by heavy dews and copious showers.

Of all the cultivated Masdevallias, none are so weirdly strange and
fascinating as is the species M. chimaera, which is so well illustrated
in the accompany engraving. This singular plant was discovered by
Benedict Roezl, and about 1872 or 1873 I remember M. Lucien Linden
calling upon me one day, and among other rarities showing me a dried
flower of this species. I remember I took up a pen and rapidly made a
sketch of the flower, which soon after appeared (1873, p. 3) in _The
Florist_, and was perhaps the first published figure of the plant. It
was named by Professor Reichenbach, who could find for it no better
name than that of the mythical monster Chimaera, than which, as an old
historian tells us, no stranger bogy ever came out of the earth's
inside. Our engraving shows the plant about natural size, and indicates
the form and local coloring pretty accurately. The ground color is
yellowish, blotched with lurid brownish crimson, the long pendent tails
being blood color, and the interior of the sepals are almost shaggy.
The spectral appearance of the flower is considerably heightened by the