ii PREFACE. 
Every botanist who has attempted to examine the flowers of dried specimens 
of orchids, and especially those of the smaller species, knows how very difficult it 
is to understand the structure of the column. For, in common with those of so 
many of the  pstaloid  Monocotylelous, the flowers of orchids, owing to the 
delicacy of their tissues, lose their form during the process of drying, however 
carefully conducted; and they do not recover it when moistened for the purposes 
of study. It was therefore made a rule, when the. preparation of this book was 
undertaken, that the drawing of every species should be made from a living 
plant; and the only exceptions to this rule (and they are very few) which have 
een made, occurred in cases where the living plants sent in from the higher regions 
by the collectors hal, in spite of the precautions taken to keep them fresh, 
withered prior to their arrival at Mr. Pantling’s house. In such cases the drawings 
of the flower were male from specimens preserved іп Formaldehyd. In this 
excellent medium the form of flowers is exactly preserved; the colours, however, 
although іп many cases remaining unaltered for some time, are found ulti- 
mately to fale. There may therefore be some departures from accuracy as to 
the exact coloration of the flowers of some of the Alpine species drawn from 
Formaldehyd specimens, but it is believed there are none in form. So strictly 
has the rule as to drawing only from living plants been observed, that neither 
figures nor descriptions have been given of species recorded from Sikkim (6.2., 
Odontochilus Clarkei and Cymbidium macrorhizon*), of which we were unable to 
collect living specimens. Several species which have large handsome flowers (6.2., 
Dendrobium primulinum, D. crystallinum, and D. Dalhousienum) recorded in 
the Flora of British India as occurring in Sikkim are believed now (probably on 
account of the extensive clearings for cultivation made within recent years) to be 
extinct. Such species have also been omitted from the book. 
Three hundred copies of the book have been printed. In half the copies the 
lithographs have been lightly printed, and the flowers and their analyses have been 
coloured; in the other half the shading in the lithographs has been made darker, 
and they have not been coloured. The drawings have all been put on the stone 
by natives of Bengal educated at the Government School of Art in Calcutta. And 
the colouring has, under very careful supervision on Mr. Pantling's part, been done 
by the sons of Nepalese coolies employed on the Government Cinchona Plantations— 
boys who had never until Mr. Pantling took them in hand been accustomed to 
use any implement more delicate than a hoe. Mr. Pantling’s perseverance and skill 
in drilling these boys into accurate colourists has beeh a standing marvel to everybody 
who has seen them at work. | 
saltare at ei een Ші volumo might be represented in Ше grot 
е. | ihe beginning of the undertaking that. twelve 
authentically-named sets should be Issued to herbaria in the different countries in 
Europe. These collections have just been distributed from the Calcutta Herbarium. 
* Тыз species was collected by on» of 
Sikkim. u3 in the Runjeet valley in 1879, but has not since been met with in 
