On the roll of martyrs to orchidology, Mr. Pearce stands high.  To him we owe, among many fine things, the hybrid Begonias which are becoming such favourites for bedding and other purposes.  He discovered the three original types, parents of the innumerable “garden flowers” now on sale—­Begonia Pearcii, B.  Veitchii, and B.  Boliviensis.  It was his great luck, and great honour, to find Masdevallia Veitchii—­so long, so often, so laboriously searched for from that day to this, but never even heard of.  To collect another shipment of that glorious orchid, Mr. Pearce sailed for Peru, in the service, I think, of Mr. Bull.  Unhappily—­for us all as well as for himself—­he was detained at Panama.  Somewhere in those parts there is a magnificent Cypripedium with which we are acquainted only by the dried inflorescence, named planifolium.  The poor fellow could not resist this temptation.  They told him at Panama that no white man had returned from the spot, but he went on.  The Indians brought him back, some days or weeks later, without the prize; and he died on arrival.

Oncidiums also are a product of the New World exclusively; in fact, of the four classes most useful to amateurs, three belong wholly to America, and the fourth in great part.  I resist the temptation to include Masdevallia, because that genus is not so perfectly easy as the rest; but if it be added, nine-tenths, assuredly, of the plants in our cool house come from the West.  Among the special merits of the Oncidium is its colour.  I have heard thoughtless persons complain that they are “all yellow;” which, as a statement of fact, is near enough to the truth, for about three-fourths may be so described roughly.  But this dispensation is another proof of Nature’s kindly regard for the interests of our science.  A clear, strong, golden yellow is the colour that would have been wanting in our cool houses had not the Oncidium supplied it.  Shades of lemon and buff are frequent among Odontoglossums, but, in a rough, general way of speaking, they have a white ground.  Masdevallias give us scarlet and orange and purple; Lycastes, green and dull yellow; Sophronitis, crimson; Mesospinidium, rose, and so forth.  Blue must not be looked for.  Even counting the new Utricularia for an orchid, as most people do, there are, I think, but five species that will live among us at present, in all the prodigious family, showing this colour; and every one of them is very “hot.”  Thus it appears that the Oncidium fills a gap—­and how gloriously!  There is no such pure gold in the scheme of the universe as it displays under fifty shapes wondrously varied.  Thus—­Oncidium macranthum! one is continually tempted to exclaim, as one or other glory of the orchid world recurs to mind, that it is the supreme triumph of floral beauty.  I have sinned thus, and I know it.  Therefore, let the reader seek an opportunity to behold O. macranthum, and judge for himself.  But it seems to me that Nature gives us a hint.  As though proudly conscious what a marvel it will unfold, this superb flower often demands nine months to perfect itself.  Dr. Wallace told me of an instance in his collection where eighteen months elapsed from the appearance of the spike until the opening of the first bloom.  But it lasts a time proportionate.