84 
Ptilodactyla sp.? Coll. H. Green. This Ptelodactyla appears to 
have become provisionally established in our orchid houses, 
specimens having been taken at intervals during the last two or 
three years. Ptilodactyla is a Central and South American genus 
and also occurs in some of the West Indian Islands. Our species 
bears a close resemblance to P. probanda, Kirsch., but is probably 
undescribed as there are no named examples of it either in the 
collections of the British Museum, or those of the Zoological 
useum of Dresden, which latter contains most of the species of 
Ptilodactyla known to science. 
No doubt the Kew species was originally imported with some 
orchid from tropical America. 
XV.—MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 
Mr. Ernest Samuret Dopp and Mr. Ernest Epwarp 
Mawerk, members of the gardening staff of the Royal Botanic 
Gardens, have been appointed by the Secretary of State for India 
in Council, on the recommendation of Kew, probationer gardeners 
for service in India, 
Dr. Peter MacOway, F.L.S,—We are indebted to Dr. Ss. 
Schénland, Director of the Albany Museum, Grahamstown, 
ade olony, for the followimg obituary notice of the late 
y 
by Prof. D. Oliver in 1870. 
The son of a well-known Methodist minister, MacOwan was 
brought up in a very hard school which would have crushed any 
less elastic spirit. This hard school was, unfortunately, continued 
more or less through his long life, in which he never found work 
with congenial surroundings or worthy of his exceptionally high 
abilities. It was his sad fate to have to devote the best years of 
his life to mere drudgery, small wonder then that he at last made 
drudgery the main business of his life, and found relief occasionally 
in satirical writings which sparkled with knowledge and wit. 
However, only few of these were published under his name. 
He was born at Hull, November 14th, 1830, educated at 
Kingswood College and Islington Grammar School. At the age 
of 16 he became a tutor at Bath, thence passed to Colchester in 
1849, and became housemaster at the great Wesleyan School at 
Woodhouse Grove, near Leeds, in 1853. In 1857 he accompanied 
Dr. Samuel Sharpe, the Headmaster, to Huddersfield College, 
taking duty as tutor in Chemistry, and graduating in London 
University the same year. 
Having to earn his own living at such an early age, I cannot 
understand how he amassed the encyclopaedic knowledge which he 
