Orchideous Plants of ChiU. 4$ 



solid pollen, without appendages, not exceeding that propor- 

 tion, or being altogether unknown, as in the southern point of 

 Africa. Within the Tropics this order seems to be reversed : 

 there the species are, for the most part, found upon trees, or 

 growing on decayed wood ; their roots are no longer fasciculated 

 and fleshy, and fitted for deriving sustenance from the earth, 

 but filiform and dry, and adapted to clinging to foreign bodies 

 for support and nutriment ; in these the pollen is solid, and 

 generally fitted with a glandular apparatus. But whether in 

 intra or extra-tropical countries, it seems to be a general law that 

 species are everywhere to be found with their pollen and co- 

 lumna in five at least of the seven different modifications of 

 which those organs are susceptible. In this I do not include 

 Cypripedium, which is a genus altogether of a pecuhar charac- 

 ter, and only known in the Northern hemisphere. 



To the law just stated I am aware of only two exceptions — 

 both very remarkable ; the one being the Cape of Good Hope, 

 and the other Chile. In Southern Africa, the Orchideae con- 

 sist almost entirely of Ophrydese, but of a structure quite pecu- 

 liar to that promontory; there is only one Neottiea and a very 

 few Vandege. The genera are all strictly what M. De Candolle 

 calls endemical ; they are numerous and extremely dissimilar 

 the one from the other, while no immediate affinity is to be 

 traced between them and the genera of other districts, except 

 the Isles of France and Madagascar, and the more equinoctial 

 districts of the African continent. Upon the whole, whatever 

 peculiarity may be found in the colony of the Cape of Good 

 Hope as to the genera which inhabit it, there is no great devia- 

 tion from the general proportion which genera and species bear 

 to the surface of the district they occupy. 



But with Chile the case is widely different. In this country, 

 which, in the eyes of botanical geographers, forms a vegetative 

 region of itself, — which extends through twenty degrees of 

 southern latitude, and which has a surface varied with all the 

 irregularity of mountains covered with eternal snow, rich val- 

 lies, and extensive plains, no more than three species of Or- 

 chideae are at this moment recorded to exist, and these are 

 known only by the figures and imperfect descriptions of 

 Feuillee. 



