282 BOTANY [Chap. X 



Letter 609 and the work has greatly amused me. The Catasetum has 

 not flowered yet ! 



In writing to Lindley about an orchid which he sent me, 

 I told him a little about Acropera, and in answer he suggests 

 that Gongora may be its female. He seems dreadfully busy, 

 and I feel that I have more right to kill you than to kill him ; 

 so can you send me one or at most two dried flowers of 

 Gongora! if you know the habitat of Acropera luteola, a 

 Gongora from the same country would be the best, but 

 any true Gongora would do ; if its pollen should prove as 

 rudimentary as that of Monacanthus relatively to Catasetum, 

 1 think I could easily perceive it even in dried specimens 

 when well soaked. 



I have picked a little out of Lecoq, but it is awful tedious 

 hunting. 



Bates is getting on with his natural history travels in one 

 volume. 1 I have read the first chapter in MS., and I think it 

 will be an excellent book and very well written ; he argues, in 

 a good and new way to me, that tropical climate has very 

 little direct relation to the gorgeous colouring of insects 

 (though of course he admits the tropics have a far greater 

 number of beautiful insects) by taking all the few genera 

 common to Britain and Amazonia, and he finds that the 

 species proper to the latter are not at all more beautiful. I 

 wonder how this is in species of the same restricted genera 

 of plants. 



If you can remember it, thank Bentham for getting my 

 Primula paper printed so quickly. I do enjoy getting a 

 subject off one's hands completely. 



I have now got dimorphism in structure in eight natural 

 orders just like Primula. Asa Gray sent me dried flowers of 

 a capital case in Amsinkia spectabilis, one of the Boragineae. 

 I suppose you do not chance to have the plant alive at Kew. 



Letter 610 T ° A ' G " More - 



Down, June 7th, 1S62. 



If you are well and have leisure, will you kindly give me 

 one bit of information : Does Ophrys aracJinites occur in the 

 Isle of Wight ? or do the intermediate forms, which are said 



1 H. W. Bates, the Naturalist on the Amazons, 1863. See Vol. I., 

 Letters 123, 148, also Life and Letters, Vol. II., p. 381. 



