CABLE ADDRESS - MUSEUM, CHICAGO 
Field Museum of Natural History 
ROOSEVELT ROAD AND LAKE MICHIGAN 
Chicago 
July 10, 1930. 
Dear Professor Ames: 
We are getting anxious to see that Macbride's 
Flora of Peru gets into print as soon as possible. The German 
botanists are getting out a flora of the Andes—how soon it is 
to appear, I do not know, but the first parts are likely to make 
their appearance in the not remote future. We have large 
quantities of material that they will not see, and I judge they 
do not intend to cover the Amazonian valley of Peru, from which 
we have huge recent collections. Perhaps there will not be so 
much competition between the two works. 
Macbride has been in Berlin almost a year now, and probably 
will not return to Chicago until December. As soon as he does 
return, I hope that we can submit for printing the first part of 
the flora. 7/e have our own printing presses in the Museum, and 
the print shop is able to take up papers promptly, except when 
the Annual Report is under way. 
Macbride is rather dilatory in some respects, and needs 
pressure, as he well knows. Dr. Dahlgre$ wants me to help him 
out on the flora, so that it may get into print as quickly as 
possible. I am not eager to work on it, but I shall try to 
work out some of the missing families of the Monocotyledons, 
so that the first part may be as extensive as possible. 
Now to come to the main point of this letter. What are the 
possibilities with regard to the Orchidaceae? I know how many 
cares you already have (I don't know, but I know that you must 
have plenty of them), but I hope that it will be possible for 
you to prepare an account of the Peruvian orchids for this flora. 
I have understood that the orchid man at Berlin—I don't recall 
his name—has signified his willingness to prepare an account of 
them. I don't mention this to influence you in any respect, but 
I should certainly much prefer to see you prepare the treatment 
of the Peruvian species. 
The recent collections that we have received do not contain 
much material in this family. I suppose Killip must have got a 
good number of orchids on his trip, but we have none of them. 
We have a collection of 300 orchids to arrive from Schunke; that 
is, we ordered them when he offered them to us, but he may have 
sold them previously. If we do get them, they should be inter¬ 
esting. 
You have, I believe, most of our Peruvian specimens, but there 
are still others here. There is, of course, Schlechter's list, 
which probably contains most of the species reported from the 
country. 
In the parts of Macbride's flora thus far prepared there is 
a key to the genera of each family, a short description of each 
genus, no key to the species, but under each species there is 
a brief description based on the salient characters, with syno¬ 
nymy, and an enumeration of the specimens examined, by provinces. 
ADDRESS ALL CORRESPONDENCE, PUBLICATIONS AND PACKAGES 
TO FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY, CHICAGO. U. S. A. 
