by a single leaf. Each leaf is about four inches long, oval-lanceol,ate, flat, shining, firm, acutely
double-toothed at the point, and at the base contracted into a short channelled petiole. The scapes
spring from the base of the pseudo-bulbs, and are very slender, erect,- rigid, brownish green, hardly
thicker than a piece of twine, and clothed with a few long narrow sheathing scales. These are terminated
by distichous spikes, which are drooping, and about six inches long. The flowers are exactly
alternate in a distichous manner, yellowish purple, nearly parallel with the flattened rachis, which is
half surrounded below each flower by a single bract, dry, ovate, concave, acuminate, striated, and
sometimes expanded into an ovate obtuse lobe on each side. The flowers are two-lipped, much
shorter than the bracts, and partially hidden by them. The sepals are ovate, obtuse, slightly tinged
with pink; the lateral ones the largest, and placed next the rachis, at the back of the labellum. The
petals are roundish-ovate, white, very obtuse, thrice as short as the sepals. The labellum is fleshy,
tinged with pink, tongue-shaped, blunt, much shorter than the sepals, and a little dilated near the
base where the margins stand erect, producing something the appearance of a shoe. The column is
very short, not at all extended at the base into a foot, but quite continuous with the ovary; in front it
is hollowed out into a stigma; and at the summit it bears the anther.
It is from the very unusual structure of the anther that the genus derives its principal distinguishing
feature. Instead of being loose in the anther-bed, hinged by its back, and opening along its
under side so as to allow the pollen-masses to drop out upon the anther-bed, it is so fastened down by
its face that the latter operation becomes impossible, and in order to provide for the escape of the
pollen, the cells open vertically, so that when their sides are drawn asunder the pollen-masses are at
once seen reposing in their places. The pollen-masses themselves are four adhering in two pairs, and
according to memoranda made by me twenty years ago, for I have not seen them since,- they are
attached to two caudicuke, the nature of whose connection with the stigma is not yet known.
In fig. 8. the left-hand figure represents a side view of a flower much magnified ; while the right
is a front view shewing the position of the pollen-masses and anthers when undisturbed.