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be ever useful. In fact, just at the time I was at Llandudno great 

 changes were making in the neighbourhood, and further contemplated. 

 The whole of the marshy flat called Llandudno Common was being 

 enclosed and drained, pools dried up, deep ditches made, piles of 

 turf were burning, and at night the long lines of lurid flame gave the 

 idea of an hostile army ravaging the country. And truly it was so as 

 regarded the botanist. Phillips told me that the bog-bean (Menyati- 

 thes trifoliata), that he had so often gathered for medicinal purposes, 

 was gone, and every marsh plant had got notice to quit. One solitary 

 Osmunda regalis I saw, and that appeared to be the last remnant of 

 boggish times. Nature was being sternly expelled at the fork's point, 

 and if the threatened crescent should rise on the sands, and young 

 Liverpool crown the old Head with villas, perhaps at last even the 

 fennel, the vervain and the wormwood may disappear with the old 

 houses and Celtic inhabitants. 



Edwin Lees. 



Henwick, near Worcester, 

 April 10, 1850. 



Curious Species of Cypripedium. 



At the March Meeting of the Horticultural Society, Mrs. Lawrence 

 exhibited a specimen of Cypripedium caudatum, the first that had 

 flowered in cultivation. The colour of the flower is a sickly yellow, 

 but the lateral petals are brown and enormously elongated, forming a 

 long narrow pendant tail on each side : from the first opening of the 

 flower these tails had continually and rapidly increased in length, and 

 no opinion can be formed as to the length they will ultimately acquire: 

 at the time of exhibition they were eighteen inches long. Professor 

 Lindley remarked that other species of Orchidaceae possessed similar 

 appendages, and that those of a species found on the Cordilleras, 

 near Lake Maracaybo, were still longer than in C. caudatum. 



Vol. hi. 5 x 



