THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 
83 
"dill," *'beans," "millet," "corn;" while the aromatic labiates 
are a very nose-gay of sweets. Their titles are really musical, 
and we love them as the bees do the flowers. Read some of 
them, as thyme, marjoram, basil, balm, dittany, penny-royal, 
blue-curls, catnip, lavender, sage, and germander. 
The whole of this random talkofmine — a sort of think- 
ing aloud, comes from meditating upon the very un-meaning 
English name of our American plant, Castilleia coccinea, form- 
erly called Bartsia. It is, as every one knows, usually called 
scarlet painted cup — in which the adjective alone is a fact. 
There is no cup or suggestion of one about the flower. The 
long, narrow, labiate flowers, indeed, are not considered. It 
is the showy, rather wedge-shaped, flat bracts that atract at- 
tention. How much better the Western name for another 
species, even more brilliant than ones, which travellers to 
Colorado and Wyoming will recall — "the Indian's-paint- 
brush." That it looks like, with its bracts, more or less laci- 
niate and daubed with georgeous vermillion. I have thought, 
too, that the name given here at the East to the comparative 
new immigrant Hieracium aurantiacum, of Diana's paint-brush 
is significant and worthy. 
Brozvn University j Providence, R. I. 
HE Orchidales represent the very highest forms of 
type of flower occasional in the Liliales and usual in the 
Scitaminales becomes the fixed and almost universal pattern. 
The epigynous form of flower, too, becomes the unvarying 
one, while in the Liliales it is only noticeable in a few sections 
like the irises and amaryllids. In the Scitaminales, which 
stand between the Liliales and Orchidales, we often find only 
one or two staments functional, but the other stamens, though 
BOTANY FOR BEGINNERS.— XXVI. 
Order 10. — Orchidales. 
Monocotyledonous plants; 
In them the zigomorphic 
