THE ORCHID REVIEW. 101 
moth. It is said to grow in Java, Borneo, Celebes and the Moluccas, as far 
east as Timor laut, generally at low elevations not very far from the coast. 
I should not counsel your readers to make experiments in the Odonto- 
glossum house. 
I read with much interest the chatty article on ‘‘ Orchids ” by Mr. W 
A. Styles, Editor of Garden and Forest, in Scribner’s Magazine for February, 
but found my sense of gravity considerably upset by the detailed story of 
the discovery of Eulophiella Elisabethe. How the Madagascar chief had 
dispatched his sister's husband with a royal retinue to guide and protect 
the collector from the dreaded Protocryptoferox madagascariensis, which 
lies in wait for his prey upon the branches of the trees in the dense woods 
where the Eulophiella grows ; crouching among the great tufts of the 
Orchid, with its tall arching spikes of white and lurid purple flowers. 
How the husband of the princess was rent to death, and the collector 
had to face the dread alternative of death or matrimony, and promptly 
chose the latter, thinking it a more pleasant way of appeasing the spirit 
of the dead than being greased and burnt. How the truculent brother-in- 
law is now protecting a few little plants until the collector is ready for 
them. And, lastly, how the confiding editor of a great horticultural journal 
“‘ sees no reason to doubt the veraciousness of the victim’s narrative.” Are 
they not all duly chronicled in the book of Scribner? What a subject it 
would have been for Mr. Paul de Longpré to have added this terrible 
Madagascar lion in his lair to the list of his charming illustrations! Of 
course it is the collector’s story, though not told in all its grotesqueness. 
Poor little civet! was not thy name of Cryptoprocta ferox sufficiently 
terrible, that it must be thus garbled, and the number of letters exactly 
doubled, save one? 1 prefer not to subject the matter to further analysis. 
The method is unsuited to it, and the result might be disastrous. 
The Gardeners’ Chronicle would like to see a monograph of Orchids 
constructed on the plan of their leaf-structure, because of the evidence it 
affords as to the conditions of their suitable growth. But does it invariably 
afford such evidence? I have seen Orchids with widely different leaf- 
structure growing under identical conditions, and those with very similar 
structure under diverse ones. Nor am I sure that any peculiarity of 
that leaf-structure could be detected which would lead me to plant one 
species of Goodyera in the open air and another in the stove, were I 
ignorant of their natural habitats. Minute anatomy is doubtless interesting, 
but I fancy other facts will come more readily to the aid of the cultivator. 
ARGUS. 
oro? 
