CLAP E Bik «Vib. 
AERIDES. 
THIS is an extensive genus of Orchids, confined to the 
tropics of the Old World, and including many large and 
showy-flowered species. They are all epiphytes, growing 
upon the trees which overhang the rivers and streams, and 
forming in many instances strikingly beautiful objects. 
The strap-shaped, recurved leaves are arranged in two 
opposite rows, one facing the other. They are usually 
jagged or lobed at the apex, as if a piece had been cut out 
or broken off; in most of the species they are channelled 
down the middle, but in a few kinds they are terete or 
nearly cylindrical. All of them throw out large, fleshy 
roots from various parts of their stems, by which they 
absorb the moisture from the atmosphere. It is to this 
aérial mode of growth, so to speak, that the genus owes 
its name, which was bestowed upon it, towards the end 
of the last century, by a Catholic missionary in Cochin 
China, to whom we are greatly indebted for our know- 
ledge of the vegetation of that region. He found there 
the plant which he named Aérides odoratum, and of which 
we shall speak hereafter, and called it Aérides on account 
of its being nourished, like the chameleon of fable, by 
aérial support alone. This plant, he tells us in his original 
