328 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. X 

 MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 



No. I.— THE GIANT ORCHIS. 



The Giant Orchis, Habenaria Susannce, Brown, — Platanthera Susaiin(£ 

 Lindley, — Natural Order, Orchideoe, according to Dalzell and Gibson, the 

 authors of the " Bombay Flora," occurs in the " Concans and Ghauts in 

 several places, but nowhere abundant." The Honourable Mr. Birdwood, in 

 his " Catalogue of the Flora of Matheran and Mahableshwar," says that 

 " only one plant of this splendid orchis has been found by Dr. Cooke at Maha- 

 bleshwar, and only one at Matheran," From my own experience of the Bor 

 Ghaut range, I find that, though the Giant Orchis is commonly reported to bs 

 rare and nowhere abundant, it is certainly plentiful on the Bhoma Hill at 

 Khandala, from which place the plant does not seem to have been recorded 

 before. 



On the Bor Ghaut the plant appears to grow towards the end of June or the 

 beginning of July, and begins to flower about the middle of September. 

 After the flowering is over and the fruiting is finished, the plant with the 

 parent root-tuber gradually shrivels up and is ultimately withered in Decem- 

 ber or January, leaving in the ground a healthy young root-tuber crowned by 

 a well-developed bud, from which the flowering-stem shoots up afresh the 

 following season. In the axil of the lowest leaf of this bud there is always 

 a minute bud in a rudimentary state. While the older parent root-tuber is 

 withering away, the rudimentary bud continues to grow and finally swells out 

 in the next season into a young bud-tuber, which, in its turn, becomes the 

 parent of a new flowering-stem. 



Sir Joseph Hooker gives the height of the stem from two to four feet. At 

 Khandala, however, the plant attains a height of a little less than two to 

 almost five feet. 



The Marathi name of the plant is WdgJi-chaord , meaning the metacarpus of 

 the tiger's foot. Among the Kathkaris, Thakurs, and other Marathi-speaking 

 people living on the Bor Ghaut, the root-tuber of the Giant Orchis is believed 

 to be a sovereign remedy for the cure of blebs or buUje, especially those 

 occurring on the metacarpus or the palm of the hand. These blebs or bull*, 

 on account of their supposed resemblance to the raised metacarpus of the 

 tiger's foot, are known as Wdgh-chaord in the Deccan. Hence the vernacular 

 name of the plant. There are some persons who believe that the plant is 

 called Wagh-chaord because the flower looks like the claws or jaws of a tiger. 



R. M. DIXON, B,A. 

 Bombay, January, 1896. 



No. II.~A LEPORINE MONSTROSITY, 

 One morning about three years ago some coolies told me that the day before 

 on their way to work, they had come suddenly round a corner upon a hawk on 



