161 
few names out of the many that might be cited to prove the 
liigh consideration in which our favourites are held in the New 
World. Nor are these the only honours that are paid to them, 
for Hernandez assures us that, in Mexico, the Indian chiefs set 
the very highest value on their blossoms, for the sake of their 
great beauty, strange figure, and delightful perfume. The fol- 
lowing are, however, almost the only known instances in which 
the tribe do any direct service to mankind. The bulbs of Max- 
illaria bicolor contain a large quantity of an insipid watery fluid, 
which is greedily sucked by the poor natives of Peru in the dry 
season. A fluid of a similar nature is obtained from what is 
probably a L;elia, in Mexico, and is administered as a cooling 
draught in fevers. From the roots of some of the orchises, even 
in Europe, the nutritive substance called ‘salep’ is obtained; in 
New Zealand, certain species are of considerable importance as 
esculents; and, in Guiana, the soles of the shoemaker are much 
indebted to the viscid matter obtained from the Catasetums and 
Cyrtopodiums, as are the poisoned arrows of the Indian. If the 
OrchidacejE have few uses they yield us pleasure of an intellect- 
ual kind, and so intense that it might attract the man of pleasure 
by its splendour; the virtuoso, by its rarity; and the man of 
science, by its novelty and extraordinary character.” 
Now that our aim is to give to those of our readers some gen- 
eral information respecting those wonders of the desert, of which 
they may occasionally witness specimens, we will copy the trans- 
lation of M. Descourtilz’s remarks on the Orchidaceae of Mexico 
given by Ur. Lindley in the Miscellaneous matter of (he Botan- 
ical Register. “It is in the bosom of the vast solitudes of 
America that these, the most diversified of plants, s|)ring up, 
flower, and perish. The entire life of a man, though devoted 
to their special study, would never finish their examination, so 
prodigious is the variety of their species, many of w hich are only 
seen after the fall of the protector upon which they lived. 
There is no part of Brazil, no latitude, no elevation above the 
sea, w here are not to be found Orchidaceae as different from each 
other as the conditions under which they glow. Some bask in 
the heat of the plains, others luxuriate in the agreeable freshness 
of a stream of water, attaching themselves to the branches of the 
trees which cover the waves with a verdant grotto; and others, 
181 &OCTAR1VU. 
