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Peristeria abounded in that steaming swamp, but the collector was on holiday. To his amazement, however, he found, side by side with it, a Masdevallia that genus most impatient of sunshine among all orchids, flourishing here in the hottest blaze! Snatching up half a dozen of the tender plants with a practised hand, he brought them safe to England.
Manson's report closes with an account of a case of abscess of the thigh, with varicose inguinal glands, in which fragments of a mature worm were discovered in the contents of the abscess. Lancet. Of all orchids no genus we can just now call to mind is more distinct or is composed of species more widely divergent in size, form, structure, and color than is this one of Masdevallia.
Thus hornbills in the East are represented by toucans in the West, and the humming bird of the West by the sunbird of the East, and so also in the Malayan archipelago. Notably in Borneo we find bolbophyls without pseudo bulbs, and with solitary or few flowered scapes and other traits singularly suggestive at first sight of the Western Masdevallia.
Sander received more than forty thousand plants of Masdevallia Tovarensis sent them direct to the auction-room and drove down the price in one month from a guinea a leaf to the fraction of a shilling. Other great sales might be recalled, as that of Phaloenopsis Sanderiana and Vanda Sanderiana, when a sum as yet unparalleled was taken in the room; Cypripedium Spicerianum, Cyp.
It was his great luck, and great honour, to find Masdevallia Veitchii so long, so often, so laboriously searched for from that day to this, but never even heard of. To collect another shipment of that glorious orchid, Mr. Pearce sailed for Peru, in the service, I think, of Mr. Bull. Unhappily for us all as well as for himself he was detained at Panama.
The Masdevallia is confined to the Western hemisphere alone, and as in bird and animal distribution, so in the case of many orchids we find that when any genus is confined to one hemisphere, those who look for another representative genus in the other are rarely disappointed.
Of Calanthe, sixteen hybrids from nineteen capsules; of Dendrobium, thirty-six hybrids from forty-one capsules; of Masdevallia, four hybrids from seventeen capsules; of Odontoglossum, none from nine capsules; of Phajus, two from two capsules; of Vanda, none from one capsule; of bi-generic, one from nine capsules.
There are many here, scarcely yet grey, who could describe the scene when Masdevallia Tovarensis first covered the stages of an auction-room. Its dainty white flowers had been known for several years. A resident in the German colony at Tovar, New Granada, sent one plant to a friend at Manchester, by whom it was divided.
Veitch have lost count; Phajus one, but several from alliance with Calanthe; Chysis two; Epidendrum one; Miltonia one, and two natural; Masdevallia ten, and two natural; and so on. And it must be borne in mind that these amazing results have been effected in one generation. Dean Herbert's achievements eighty years ago were not chronicled, and it is certain that none of the results survive. Mr.
Roezl proceeds to speak of bouquets of Masdevallia Harryana three feet across, and so forth. The natives showed him "gardens" devoted to this species, for the ornament of their church; it was not cultivated, of course, but evidently planted. They were acres in extent.