SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 
UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 
WASHINGTON, D. C. 
April 18, 1923. 
Mr. Oakes Ames, 
355 Commonwealth Avenue, 
Boston, Massachusetts. 
Dear Mr. Ames: 
I was glad to hear of your safe return from Central 
America, and of the suocess which you had in collecting 
orchids. You must have obtained a great many new records 
for that family, at least in Honduras, where so little 
collecting has been done. 
Mr. Maxon has asked me to reply to two queries in 
your letter of April 9 addressed to him. I have not been 
able to place the locality in Mexico listed by Bindley as 
Xapatam, nor can I find any place name which could easily 
be so rendered if the writing were illegible. As you 
suggest, it seems quite possible that Zacuapan may be the 
locality referred to, for Hartweg did collect there. I 
have made a search in Plantae Hartwegianae, and I do not 
find any other locality mentioned there which at all sug¬ 
gests Xapatam. 
There has 'certainly been very little collecting done 
in Honduras, and practically all of the plants obtained 
there have been secured either along the north coast or 
in the corner by Copan. C. G. Bernoulli is said to have 
visited Copan in 1870. Carl Scherzer is reported to have 
visited Tegucigalpa in 1854, but whether he made any col¬ 
lections or not I do not know. The largest collection of 
plants made in Honduras is probably that obtained by Percy 
Wilson for the Hew York Botanical Garden a few years ago. 
The plants were collected upon the north coast and you can 
doubtless obtain more precise information by writing di¬ 
rectly to Mr. Wilson. Mr. W. C. Shannon obtained a few 
plants for Captain Smith in Honduras in 1892 and 1893. 
These were collected chiefly along the Salvadorean frontier, 
while Mr. Shannon was engaged in surveying the region for 
the International Railroad, which is now at last being 
constructed. Mr. F. J. Dyer a few years ago was Consul 
at Ceiba and Tegucigalpa and collected a few plants there 
which he forwarded to us. He was particularly interested in 
Entomology and although there are two or three hundred of 
the plants they are mostly very oommon things. 
