orchid-hunter nowadays.  If I mention that the canoe-work on this route demands thirty-two portages, thirty-two loadings and unloadings of the cargo, the reader can judge what a “difficult road” must be.  Ascending the Roraima, Mr. Dressel, collecting for Mr. Sander, lost his herbarium in the Essequibo River.  Savants alone are able to estimate the awful nature of the crisis when a comrade looses his grip of that treasure.  For them it is needless to add that everything else went to the bottom.[2]

One is tempted to linger among the Odontoglots, though time is pressing.  In no class of orchids are natural hybrids so mysterious and frequent.  Sometimes one can detect the parentage; in such cases, doubtless, the crossing occurred but a few generations back:  as a rule, however, such plants are the result of breeding in and in from age to age, causing all manner of delightful complications.  How many can trace the lineage of Mr. Bull’s Od. delectabile—­ivory white, tinged with rose, strikingly blotched with red and showing a golden labellum? or Mr. Sander’s Od.  Alberti-Edwardi, which has a broad soft margin of gold about its stately petals?  Another is rosy white, closely splashed with pale purple, and dotted round the edge with spots of the same tint so thickly placed that they resemble a fringe.  Such marvels turn up in an importation without the slightest warning—­no peculiarity betrays them until the flowers open; when the lucky purchaser discovers that a plant for which he gave perhaps a shilling is worth an indefinite number of guineas.

Lycaste also is a genus peculiar to America, such a favourite among those who know its merits that the species L.  Skinneri is called the “Drawing-Room Flower.”  Professor Reichenbach observes in his superb volume that many people utterly ignorant of orchids grow this plant in their miscellaneous collection.  I speak of it without prejudice, for to my mind the bloom is stiff, heavy, and poor in colour.  But there are tremendous exceptions.  In the first place, Lycaste Skinneri alba, the pure white variety, beggars all description.  Its great flower seems to be sculptured in the snowiest of transparent marble.  That stolid pretentious air which offends one—­offends me, at least—­in the coloured examples, becomes virginal dignity in this case.  Then, of the normal type there are more than a hundred variations recognized, some with lips as deep in tone, and as smooth in texture, as velvet, of all shades from maroon to brightest crimson.  It will be understood that I allude to the common forms in depreciating this species.  How vast is the difference between them, their commercial value shows.  Plants of the same size and the same species range from 3s. 6d. to 35 guineas, or more indefinitely.