SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 
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^ P-Lp.yU~~S'JJi*-. UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 
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October 13, 1924. 
Mr. Oakes Ames, 
355 Commonwealth Avenue, 
Boston, Massachusetts. 
Dear Mr. Ames: 
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Recently I completed a short article upon orchid col¬ 
lecting in Central America which is to be published in the 
next Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution. I wish 
to use the figures given by Sch lech ter in his enumeration 
of the Central American orchids, but strangely enough I 
have been unable to locate the article, although I have had 
it previously. It is remarkable that the article is not 
indexed in the Department of Agriculture catalogue. Will 
von be kind enough to tell me where it appeared? I should 
also be greatly obliged if you would give me the total num¬ 
ber of species which Schlechter reports from each of the 
Central American countries. If you have any better data 
with regard to the orchid flora of these countries I should 
be very glad to use your figures. I should like also to 
know what statement Schlechter makes with regard to the to¬ 
tal number of Costa Rican species in his more recent paper. 
This also apparently is not in the Department of Agricul¬ 
ture Library, and we do not have a copy of it in our own 
library. 
Is Epidendrum p achvoaroum Sch. a valid species? We have 
a photograph of this which I should like to use for illus¬ 
tration purposes. 
Recently Alfaro has been forwarding a lot of orchid 
specimens and I hope to get them ready to send you in the 
near future. He has certainly been collecting very dili¬ 
gently, and I hope that he may have turned up some new things. 
In case there should he some undescribed species in his col¬ 
lection, I hope that you will name some of them for him, for 
I am sure that he would appreciate the distinction. 
Sincerely yours 
C. 
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Paul C. Standley 7 
Associate Curator, 
Division of Plants. 
