have a species in England, C. calceolus, by no means insignificant; it can be purchased from the dealers, but it is almost extinct in this country now.  America furnishes a variety of species; which ought to be hardy.  They will bear a frost below zero, but our winter damp is intolerable.  Mr. Godseff tells me that he has seen C. spectabile growing like any water-weed in the bogs of New Jersey, where it is frozen hard, roots and all, for several months of the year; but very few survive the season in this country, even if protected.  Those fine specimens so common at our spring shows are imported in the dry state.  From the United States also we get the charming C. candidum, C. parviflorum, C. pubescens, and many more less important.  Canada and Siberia furnish C. guttatum, C. macranthum, and others.  I saw in Russia, and brought home, a magnificent species, tall and stately, bearing a great golden flower, which is not known “in the trade;” but they all rotted gradually.  Therefore I do not recommend these fine outdoor varieties, which the inexperienced are apt to think so easy.  At the same cost others may be bought, which, coming from the highlands of hot countries, are used to a moderate damp in winter.

Foremost of these, perhaps the oldest of cool orchids in cultivation, is C. insigne, from Nepal.  Everyone knows its original type, which has grown so common that I remarked a healthy pot at a window-garden exhibition some years ago in Westminster.  One may say that this, the early and familiar form, has no value at present, so many fine varieties have been introduced.  A reader may form a notion of the difference when I state that a small plant of exceptional merit sold for thirty guineas a short time ago—­it was C. insigne, but glorified.  This ranks among the fascinations of orchid culture.  You may buy a lot of some common kind, imported, at a price representing coppers for each individual, and among them may appear, when they come to bloom, an eccentricity which sells for a hundred pounds or more.  The experienced collector has a volume of such legends.  There is another side to the question, truly, but it does not personally interest the class which I address.  To make a choice among numberless stories of this sort, we may take the instance of C.  Spicerianum.

It turned up among a quantity of Cypripedium insigne in the greenhouse of Mrs. Spicer, a lady residing at Twickenham.  Astonished at the appearance of this swan among her ducks, she asked Mr. Veitch to look at it.  He was delighted to pay seventy guineas down for such a prize.  Cypripediums propagate easily, no more examples came into the market, and for some years this lovely species was a treasure for dukes and millionaires.  It was no secret that the precious novelty came from Mrs. Spicer’s greenhouse; but to call on a strange lady and demand how she became possessed of a certain plant is not