THE ORCHID REVIEW. 201 
The note about Orchid fibre at page 276 is curious, but it strikes me as 
one which I have met with before in another form. The late Major. 
General Berkeley published a note in these pages respecting the use by the 
Andaman islanders of a fibre made from the stems of Dendrobium 
secundum for the string, or ‘‘ connector,” with which the head is fastened 
to the shaft of the arrows which they use for shooting fish (vol. i., p. 82). 
But it afterwards appeared that it was the yellow bark of the plant that was 
used, the fibre coming from a totally different source, and that Orchid bark 
was used for ornamenting various articles, both by the Andamanese and by 
a native tribe in Torres Straits who greatly resemble them in their habits 
(vol. vii., p. 266). The latest version seems to be that a very delicate fibre 
is prepared by the natives, which they use in the preparation of the many 
ornaments those races prepare for trade with the paler races of man. 
I have culled the following from the issue of American Gardening for 
September 8th :— 
* LooOKS LIKE AN EQUATION IN ALGEBRA.—Epidendrum Unmlautftii, 
Zahlbr., Wien Ill. Gart. Zeit., 1893, p. 1, t. 1.=E. costaricense, Reich., Bot. 
Zeit., X., p. 937.—R. A. Rolfe.” 
I should think it looks rather more like a joke, for wondering what 
could be the point of it I suddenly remembered a note which recently 
appeared in the Review (p. 238), signed by ‘R.A. R.,” giving the history 
of Epidendrum costaricense, and on looking it up I find that the author 
gave two references to the sources of information, and these have been taken 
from their context and now appear in the above garbled fashion. If the 
information had originally appeared in American Gardening the equation 
would perhaps have read somewhat differently. For example, on the 
previous page to the above perpetration I find an interesting article on the 
Cattleya Fly, in which several such useful references appear, also a figure, 
and if anv reader would like to see it I refer them to Amer. Gard., xxi., 
p- 600, fig. 128. I fail, however, to see the point of the joke. 
Here is another interesting little excerpt from another source :—‘‘A 
Sussex Naturalist” is “greatly astounded at the ignorance which still 
prevails among us in the matter of field botany,” and among other examples 
cited of this ignorance we read :— 
‘I visit the gardens of a neighbouring squire, and chat with the 
intelligent young man who shows me round. . . . When we go to the 
Orchid House, he tells me that these rare and costly flowers come from 
abroad, and looks at me with incredulity when I tell him I could show him 
where Orchids grow near his own door whose flowers assume the shapes of 
bee and fly, spider and butterfly, and that there are nearly fifty species 
