Many a strange figure has been met with among Orchi- 

 deous plants, and numerous are the animal forms which 

 Botanists have fancied they could recognise among their 

 singular flowers. Some are said to bear little men and 

 women swinging below their canopy of petals ; others have 

 appeared to carry the likeness of lizards, frogs, and other 

 reptiles, crouching among their leaves ; while some have 

 been compared to Oberons and Titanias hanging by their 

 tiny arms from the bells, where they have concealed them- 

 selves. To what the flowers of the plant now figured can 

 be likened, we profess not to know, unless to some of the 

 fantastic animals of heraldry ; a griffin segreant, as they 

 term it, would do as well as any other for a comparison. 



This most curious species was sent us by Richard Har 



Esq., from his Garden at Liverpool 



originally 



introduced from Demerara, in 1832, by Mr. Thomas Moss 



of Otterspool. It flowered in the hotho 



in 



May 



its 



bunches of flowers were two feet and a half long, and hung 

 down most gracefully from the pot in which the plant 

 was suspended ; of this our diminished figure in the back- 

 ground is intended to be a representation. 



A few years ago the genus Gongora was so little known, 

 that some doubts were even entertained of its 



existence. 



Our Gardens now possess two species, neither of which 

 the kind originally figured in the Flora Peruviana. 



J. L. 





