234 THE ORCHID REVIEW. 



cold" — and thence along the fertile banks of a stream for sonic miles, ;md 

 after an ascent of 1,000 feet he reached the extensive plain of La Mesa de los- 

 Santos. " One side of La Mesa de los Santos," he remarks (pp. 113, 114), 

 "is bounded by immense precipices, some of them over 200 feet in height. 

 . . . . On the edges of these precipices, where the eagle and the condor 

 make their home, the lovely Cattleya Mendelii has grown in profusion since 

 the memory of man. Even when the first plant-hunter arrived, these dizzy 

 heights offered no obstacle to his determination to plunder. Natives were 

 let down by means of ropes, and by the same ropes the plants were 

 hauled up in thousands, and when I visited the place all that I could 

 see of its former beauty and wealth of plants was an occasional straggling 

 bulb hung as if in mid-air on some point only accessible to the eagles. I 

 left the place impressed with the magnificence of the scenery, but dis- 

 appointed in my search for plants." 



The traveller then proceeded over the plain to the small village of Los 

 Santos, on the edge of a declivity of about 1,000 feet, the turbulent little 

 river Subi running in the valley below. " I had been informed," he remarks 

 (p. 117), " that Cattleya Mendelii was still to be found in quantities on the 

 eastern range of the Andes, so after leaving the precipices of Subi I turned 

 off in the direction of a small village called Curiti, at the foot of the range 



of mountains so celebrated for Orchids The vegetation is 



somewhat subtropical, lovely ferns and Selaginellas being very luxuriant, 

 as well as the feathery bamboos, but with an absence of the fine rich timber 



trees and towering palms of the lower grounds I had not far to 



go before I was rewarded with the object of my search, in the myriads of 

 Bromeliacese and Orchids which literally cover the short stunted trees, and 

 the bare points of rocks, where scarcely an inch of soil is to be found. The 

 most magnificent sight for even the most stoical observer is the immense 

 clumps of Cattleya Mendelii, each new bulb bearing four or five of its 

 gorgeous rose-coloured flowers, many of them growing in the full sun or 

 with very little shade, and possessing a glowing colour which is very 

 difficult to get in the stuffy hothouses where the plants are cultivated. Some 

 of these plants, considering their size and the slowness of growth, must 

 have taken years tc develop, for I have taken plants from the trees with 

 five-hundred bulbs and as many as one-hundred spikes of flowers, which to 

 a lover of Orchids is worth travelling from Europe to see. Apart from 

 the few extraordinary specimens, the Orchids, as a rule, are very much 

 crowded and mixed up with other vegetation." Mr. Millican gives an 

 illustration, reproduced from a photograph which he took, of one of these 

 trees, and remarks :— " The higher branches are covered with long white 

 lichen ; a little lower is an immense clump of Tillandsias, while the branch 

 on the right hand is inhabited by some Oncidiums. The next plant lower 



