26 CYPRIPEDIUM ARIETINUM. RAM's-HEAD MOCCASIN-FLOWER. 



gruoLis results of these artificial systems. He saw that jumps 

 from a Passion flower to a Cypripcdhini and similar leaps were so 

 unnatural that in 1751 he wrote, "The natural system is the first 

 and last desideratum in botany. 'Natura non facit saltus,'" that 

 is, Nature does not leap. In pursuance of this idea he mapped 

 out many natural groups, and of these "Orchideae" was one; the 

 name being taken from oi'chis, which not only represented a very 

 large collection of species at that time, but was perhaps the most 

 ancient of any of the family names. For Orchis is one of those 

 flowers which has a place in heathen mythology. Therein we are 

 told that Orchis was the son of a rural god named Patellanus 

 and the nymph Acolasia. He was one of the most dissolute 

 of the heathen gods, and excited the resentment of one of 

 the priestesses of Bacchus, who stirred up some of the male 

 attendants at the festival of Bacchus to redress the insults 

 offered to her, whereupon they fell upon him, and tore him to 

 jDieces. The general verdict of his co-deities was that it "served 

 him right," and he would perhaps have been suffered to lie in ob- 

 livion had not his father Patellanus had some influence with the 

 superior gods. And so at the paternal request his dead body 

 was turned into the flower which as "Orchis" still bears his name. 



The genus Cypripcdiitm, to which our present subject belongs, 

 was not however known to the ancients. The name was given 

 to it by Linneeus, and is derived from two Greek words, kypris, 

 one of the names of Venus, and podion, a slipper. Before this 

 time the European species, Cypripedium Calceolus, was known as 

 Calceolits Mariana, or the Shoe of Our Lady the Virgin Mar)'; and 

 though the name of Linnaeus was new, we see that it may have 

 been suggested by the popular one. 



The subject of our present chapter, Cypripedium ariclimnji, is 

 by no means the gayest of these slippers of Venus. Some have 

 already appeared in our work which the reader will regard as of 

 a handsomer pattern. But this one is in some respects more in- 

 teresting, and especially because it is the connecting link between 

 Cypripedium and other genera of the great Orchid family. The 



