Town, by Mr. Watson (Assistant Curator of Kew), and was 
presented to the Royal Gardens by Professor MacOwan, the 
Superintendent of the Cape Town Botanical Gardens, with 
the information that it had quite recently been brought 
down from Table Mountain. Mr. Bolus, however, who 
happened to bein England at the time of its flowering, and 
was engaged on his admirable work on the Orchids of the 
Cape Peninsula, having examined it, did not recognize it as 
a plant of that region of South Africa, and suspected that — 
there was some mistake as to its being a Table Mountain 
plant. Its reference to D. lacera would confirm Mr. Bolus’ 
suspicion, for that plant is a native of the Uitenhage and 
Graham’s Town districts, upwards of 300 miles from Cape 
Town, whence there are excellent specimens in the Kew | 
Herbarium, collected by Mr. MacOwan himself. No doubt 
it was in that region that Sparrman discovered it, for he 
travelled into the interior of South Africa in about 1780, 
after having circumnavigated the globe with Cook on his 
second voyage. _ 3 
D. lacera is the first of the section Herschelia to be 
figured in this work. The sectional name is classical; it 
was proposed as a genus by Lindley, for the beautiful 
D. graminifolia, Ker (a native of Table Mountain), in honour 
of the distinguished astronomer, Sir John Herschel, who was 
at that time making his catalogue of the Southern stars at 
Cape Town, and who was a devoted lover and cultivator of 
Orchids. Of this D. graminifolia (Herschelia ccelestis) 
Lindley says, ‘‘ Species haec pulcherrima colore cali aus- 
tralis intense coeruleo superbiens.’’ Mr. Bolus adds to his 
description of it that it is the commonest species in the 
Cape Peninsula, and attracts universal observation by its 
colour and brillianey, but that, in spite of repeated efforts, 
it does not appear to have been successfully grown in 
England.—J. D. H. | 
_ Fig. 1, Top of ovary, base of lip etals and column ; 2, petals, lip and 
column ; 3 and 4, pollinia:—al/ eitoecal, pa 
