frequency with which abscess of the scrotum or thigh is met with in Chinese practice is, in Manson's opinion, attributable to this. Dr. 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_. * * * * * THE SPECTRAL MASDEVALLIA. (_M. chimæra_.) 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. It was founded well nigh a century ago by Ruiz and Pavon on a species from Mexico, M. uniflora. which, so far as I know, is nearly if not quite unknown to present day cultivators. When Lindley wrote his "Genera and Species" in 1836, three species of Masdevallias only were known to botanists but twenty-five years later, when he prepared his "Folio Orchidaceæ," nearly forty species were; known in herbaria, and to-day perhaps fully a hundred kinds are grown in our gardens, while travelers tell us of all the gorgeous beauties which are known to exist high up on the cloud-swept sides of the Andes and Cordilleras of the New World. 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. 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. Thus some bolbophyl, for example, have caudal appendages to their sepals, as in Masdevallias, and on the other hand some Masdevallias have their labellums hinged and oscillatory, which is so commonly the case as to be "almost characteristic" in the genus Bolbophyllum or Sarcopodium. Speaking generally, Masdevallias, coming as most of them do from high altitudes, lend themselves to what is now well known as "cool treatment," and cultivators find it equally necessary to offer them moisture in abundance both at the root and in the atmosphere, also seeing that when at home in cloud-land they are often and well nigh continually drenched by heavy dews and copious showers.