434 BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 
which it has rained heavily; and you may hence judge that 
it has been impossible for me to make any important excur- 
sions in this neighbourhood. I, however, embrace every 
opportunity that offers for going out, and by this means 
have added considerably to my stock of dried specimens. In 
my last letter, I believe I stated that I had eight hundred spe- 
cies; the number now amounts, I am sure, to full a thou- 
sand, and the specimens to upwards of twenty thousand. 
Among some of the rarities lately added to my stock, I may 
mention a fine species of Tapura, (Aubl.); a Diplusodon, 
with large purple flowers; and a small tree which I believe 
to be the Physocalymna florida (Pohl), but the specimens 
are in a very bad condition, having neither flower nor fruit, 
the large calyx being all that remains. It is very common 
in this neighbourhood, the inflorescence, however, only ap- 
pearing during the dry season. I also found a beautiful annual 
Gloxinia, about a foot anid a half high, with purple axillary 
blossoms, the middle lobe of the under lip. of which has its 
margin toothed and turned inwards, so as exactly to resemble 
the lower jaw of a fish, from which peculiarity I have named 
the species G. icthyostoma. Along with it grows another indi- 
vidual of the same genus, somewhat similar to the one which I 
sent you from Oeiras, and an herbaceous fibrous-rooted Ges- 
neria, which is not yet in flower; I hope soon to procure 
specimens of both. They grow in the shady clefts of calca- 
reous rocks, inhabited also by a climbing species of Alstræ- 
meria, which will soon be in blossom. Two species of Jlez, 
one of them perhaps but a narrow-leaved variety of the other, 
numerous Composite, and Melastomacee, and a few terres- 
trial Orchidee, have lately rewarded my researches. © One of 
the latter is highly beautiful ; as yet I have obtained but two © 
specimens of it, but more are coming into blossom. It is 
about two and a half feet high, with numerous lanceolate, 
Somewhat amplexicaul glaucous leaves, from the base of the — ; 
ppermost of which is produced the flower, about three 
inche s longy and of a purplish colour. The structure of the 3 : 
= ‘inflorescence resembles the genus Vanilla, to which the plant | 
