the present individual, which inhabits the still more southern 
countries of Europe. 
TouRNEFORT sccms to have paid great attention to this 
tribe of plants during his voyage to the Levant, and has caused 
several of them to be drawn upon vellum, by that admirable 
artist AuBRiET, who accompanied him as a botanical draughts- 
man. These figures form a part of the splendid Vellum Col- 
lection, as it is called, of Natural History, begun under the 
auspices of Gaston, Duke of Orleans, brother of Louis XIII. 
and continued to the present time at the expence of the 
French Government. Five new species, taken from those 
drawings, are figured and described by Desfontaines in the 
loth volume of the Annales du Museum d'Histoire Natu- 
relle. Two of them, the O. vilhsa of Desfontaines ( O. ten- 
thredinifera of Willd.) and the O. Speculum, and, as it 
would appear, the only exotic true Ophrides ever introduced in 
a living state into this country, were brought by Mr Swainson 
from Palermo ;' and, of these, excellent figures have been given 
by Mr Gawler in the numbers of the Botanical Register. 
Tubers of O. lutea were received from Gibraltar, by the Bota- 
nical Garden here, through the kindness of Captain Dunn of 
Greenock ; and, though inclosed, in a dry state, in a bag of 
Ranunculus roots, they flowered in the green-house in the suc- 
ceeding spring. 
In a growing state this plant is beautiful, and most re- 
sembles O. iricolor of the Annales du Museum, v. 10. t. 13. 
differing, however, from it, in the fewer number of flowers up- 
on its spike, the dissimilar form of the lip, and the yellow, not 
purple, colour of the blossoms. 
WiLLDENOW states it to be a general inhabitant of Spain 
and Portugal ; and Bivona Bernardi of the hills and mea- 
dows about Palermo and Catania. 
Fig. 1. The small inner segment of the perianth. Fig. 2. Lip and column 
of fructification. Fig. 3. Upper part of the stigma^ with the anther. 
Fig. 4. One of the pollen-masses.—^// more or less magnified. 
