" The geographical distribution shows that Cypripedium was more
common in early times--to speak vaguely--and covered an area yet more
extensive than now. And the process of extermination is still working,
as with other primitive types.
Messrs. Veitch point out that although few genera of plants are
scattered so widely over the earth as Cypripedium, the species have
withdrawn to narrow areas, often isolated, and remote from their
kindred. Some are rare to the degree that we may congratulate ourselves
upon the chance which put a few specimens in safety under glass before
it was too late, for they seem to have become extinct even in this
generation. Messrs. Veitch give a few striking instances. All the plants
of _Cyp. Fairieanum_ known to exist have sprung from three or four
casually imported in 1856. Two bits of _Cyp. superbiens_ turned up among
a consignment of _Cyp. barbatum_; none have been found since, and it is
doubtful whether the species survives in its native home. Only three
plants of _Cyp. Marstersianium_ have been discovered. They reached Mr.
Bull in a miscellaneous case of Cypripediums forwarded to him by the
Director of the Botanic Gardens at Buitzenzorze, in Java; but that
gentleman and his successors in office have been unable to find another
plant. These three must have reached the Gardens by an accident--as they
left it--presented perhaps by some Dutchman who had been travelling.
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