In writing to Lindley about an orchid which he sent me, I told him a little about Acropera, and in answer he suggests that Gongora may be its female. He seems dreadfully busy, and I feel that I have more right to kill you than to kill him; so can you send me one or at most two dried flowers of Gongora? if you know the habitat of Acropera luteola, a Gongora from the same country would be the best, but any true Gongora would do; if its pollen should prove as rudimentary as that of Monacanthus relatively to Catasetum, I think I could easily perceive it even in dried specimens when well soaked. I have picked a little out of Lecoq, but it is awful tedious hunting. Bates is getting on with his natural history travels in one volume. (609/4. H.W. Bates, the "Naturalist on the Amazons," 1863. See Volume I., Letters 123, 148, also "Life and Letters," Volume II., page 381.) I have read the first chapter in MS., and I think it will be an excellent book and very well written; he argues, in a good and new way to me, that tropical climate has very little direct relation to the gorgeous colouring of insects (though of course he admits the tropics have a far greater number of beautiful insects) by taking all the few genera common to Britain and Amazonia, and he finds that the species proper to the latter are not at all more beautiful. I wonder how this is in species of the same restricted genera of plants. If you can remember it, thank Bentham for getting my Primula paper printed so quickly. I do enjoy getting a subject off one's hands completely. I have now got dimorphism in structure in eight natural orders just like Primula. Asa Gray sent me dried flowers of a capital case in Amsinkia spectabilis, one of the Boragineae. I suppose you do not chance to have the plant alive at Kew. LETTER 610. TO A.G. MORE. Down, June 7th, 1862. If you are well and have leisure, will you kindly give me one bit of information: Does Ophrys arachnites occur in the Isle of Wight? or do the intermediate forms, which are said to connect abroad this species and the bee-orchis, ever there occur?