Powells Horticultural Garden 
ORCHIDS ON LY * 
Balboa, Canal Zone, Panama 
* 
BALBOA, C. Z., PANAMA_ October _ 1 0 ,_X_2.21_ 192 
Prof Oakes Ames, 
North Easton, Mass, 
My dear Professor Ames: 
I have, your esteemed letters of Sep 14 $ 
and I have given them careful consideration. 
Before replying to the main questions in your letter of the 14h 
I wish to clear myself of the unsaid, hut the implied charge of 
unpatriotism in sending my specimens to Europe instead of to the 
U.S. I am a native of Virginia and my forbears have a recorded 
and traceable history in that State since the year 163.5, hence I 
could not be unpatriotic. 
Now as to the reasons that impelled me to send them to Euro¬ 
pe: This will take some space but I deem it essential. 
In 1313, after I had been collecting Orchids in a desultary 
way for several years, studying them curiously at first and then 
giving them away; I decided to establish in Balboa a garden for 
the cultivation, propagation and identification of the Panama 
species; as I had found so many that were beautiful and inter¬ 
esting, I was induced to take this step because I found that 
there was needed a garden of this sort here, no one either in the 
Zone or in Panama having any knowledge of the nomenclature or 
habits of the Orchid. After having spent some two or three years 
collecting and placing them, using numbers in lieu of names, I 
begun to seriously feel the lack of names. Accordingly I wrote 
to a prominent Botanical Garden in the States and asked if it 
would be agreeable for me to send specimens to them for identi¬ 
fication. To this letter I received no reply. This stung me, 
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