NAT. ORDER. ORCHIDE^. 
73 
founded. Whoever studies tliem must bear in mind that their 
fructification is always reducible to three sepals and three petals, 
a column consisting of stamens grown firmly to one another, and 
to a single style and stigma ; and, with this in view, he will have 
no difficulty in understanding the organization of even the most 
anomalous Cape species. For a long time it was supposed that 
no deviation from the general structure existed, and that we had 
not in Orchidese any very decided link between that family and 
others; but the discovery of a remarkable Indian plant by Blume 
and Wallick, called Apostasia by the former botanist, which with 
many of the peculiarities of this order, is iriandrous, with a regu- 
lar corolla, and three locular fruit, seems to show that even in this 
tribe there are gradations which tend to destroy the value of the 
technical differences of botanists. It does not, however, appear 
to me certain that this genus, although referred to by Blume as 
belonging to Orchideae, is not really a different tribe. 
Some species of this beautiful family of plants are to be found 
in all parts of the world, except upon the very verge of the frozen 
zone, and in climates remarkable for their dryness. In Europe, 
■Asia and North America, they are found growing in marshes, and 
in meadows ; in the drier parts of Africa they are either rare or 
unknown ; at the Cape of Good Hope they abound in similar situ- 
ations as in this country ; but in the hot, damp parts of the East 
and West Indies, in Madagascar and the neighboring islands, in 
the damp and humid forests of Brazil, and on the lower moun- 
tains of Nipal, these Orchideous plants flourish in the greatest 
variety and profusion, some kinds no longer seeking their nutri- 
ment from the soil, but clinging to the trunks and limbs of trees, 
to stones and bare rocks, where they vegetate among ferns and 
other shade-loving plants, in countless thousands. Of the epiphy- 
tic class, one only is found so far north as South Carolina, and 
most commonly found growing with the Magnolia, if we except a 
sii.gle specimen of Japan, which appears to have a climate pe- 
