355 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Mass. November 22, 1921. 
My dear HrPowell: 
Your letter with enclosed list of Panama 
orohids arrived at noon to-day. I got off to you in the 
first mail a package of orchid plates marked up in accord¬ 
ance with your request as I understood it from your letter. 
That is I took some plates that 1 had on hand and simply 
wrote in the margins and elsewhere the usual botanical terms 
for the different structures. If I ha-toe failed to give you 
what you want all you have to do is to be more explicit. I 
am at your service. I have ordered sent to you from Hew York 
a little book written bjt a good friend of mine who was former¬ 
ly Director of the Ceylon Gardens. This book is not a treatise 
on orchids, but it is a mighty big library in parvo and you 
will be pleased to have it. The section devoted to orchids 
will answer some of your questions and make some of the more 
difficult terms clear to you. So much for that. 
You ask about field work that can be done by 
a man in the tropics. My Spiranthes paper will give you a 
hint, also my Goodyera paper. For example, how do orchids 
come up from seed in the tropics? Are seedlings to be found 
amoung the parenet plants? If so, are they also to be found 
at some distance from the parent clumps? Are tree colonies 
made up of old plants or of comparatively young plants. In 
other words, does the same thing take place with the epiphytes 
in Panama that I have shown takes place in the case of Good ¬ 
yera pubesoens ?In my tropical expeditions I have noted seed¬ 
lings, but I failed to attempt to explain their distribution. 
Careful descriptions of orchids that are only known from 
dried specimens will always be worth while. If you want more 
