May 19, 1892. ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
809 
study, and from these Messrs. Veitch pass to a synopsis of species 
and varieties, embracing a careful description of each, references 
to sources of information and illustrations, and particulars of its 
introduction. Every reader will welcome the details supplied, but 
all may not appreciate the amount of labour, inquiry, and research 
that must have been devoted to collecting them. The task must 
have proved a tremendous one. We reproduce, by permis¬ 
sion, their engraving (fig. 64) of the beautiful yellow and brown 
year 1780, the locality given being Guayaquil, in Ecuador, but as 
this town is a port on the estuary of the River Palenque and 
situated near the arid coast, this specimen must have been obtained 
from the neighbouring Cordillera. A long interval elapsed before 
it again came under the cognisance of science, the first to rediscover 
the species being Matthews, who gathered it in 1838 at Tunguragua, 
on the Eastern Cordillera of Ecuador, at 10,000 feet elevation. It 
was next gathered by Hartweg near Alausi, by Professor Jamieson 
Fig. 64.—ONCIDIUM MACKANTHUM. 
species macranthum, with its curious purple lip, and also their 
remarks respecting it, which follow a description of the 
plant and references to plates and other illustrations. They will 
serve to indicate the completeness of the information supplied. 
“ The earliest evidence of the existence of this superb Oncidium 
was a single fiower in the herbarium of the Spanish botanists Ruiz 
and Pavon, which was acquired by Mr. A. B. Lambert, the author 
of ‘ The Genus Pinus,’ and now in the Natural History Museum at 
South Kensington. This flower was probably gathered about the 
of Quito, near Calicali, and by Spruce at Llalaiand also in Matthews’ 
locality, but none of these botanical collectors sent living plants 
to Europe. The first notice of it as a horticultural plant occurs 
in the horticultural journals of 1868, in the spring of which year 
it flowered for the first time in this country in the collection of 
Lord Londesborough at Norbiton, and shortly afterwards at 
Farnham Castle, and in our Chelsea nursery. No indication is 
given of the origin of these plants, which were doubtless all 
imported at the same time. 
