our ignorance is to blame for the loss of those species which suddenly collapse.  Sir Trevor Lawrence observed the other day:  “With regard to the longevity of orchids, I have one which I know to have been in this country for more than fifty years, probably even twenty years longer than that—­Renanthera coccinea.”  The finest specimens of Cattleya in Mr. Stevenson Clarke’s houses have been “grown on” from small pieces imported twenty years ago.  If there were more collections which could boast, say, half a century of uninterrupted attention, we should have material for forming a judgment; as a rule, the dates of purchase or establishment were not carefully preserved till late years.

But there is one species of Cattleya which must needs have seventy years of existence in Europe, since it had never been re-discovered till 1890.  When we see a pot of C. labiata, the true, autumn-flowering variety, more than two years old, we know that the very plant itself must have been established about 1818, or at least its immediate parent—­for no seedling has been raised to public knowledge.[4]

In avowing a certain indifference to Cattleyas, I referred to the bulk, of course.  The most gorgeous, the stateliest, the most imperial of all flowers on this earth, is C.  Dowiana—­unless it be C. aurea, a “geographical variety” of the same.  They dwell a thousand miles apart at least, the one in Colombia, the other in Costa Rica; and neither occurs, so far as is known, in the great intervening region.  Not even a connecting link has been discovered; but the Atlantic coast of Central America is hardly explored, much less examined.  In my time it was held, from Cape Camarin to Chagres, by independent tribes of savages—­not independent in fact alone, but in name also.  The Mosquito Indians are recognized by Europe as free; the Guatusos kept a space of many hundred miles from which no white man had returned; when I was in those parts, the Talamancas, though not so unfriendly, were only known by the report of adventurous pedlars.  I made an attempt—­comparatively spirited—­to organize an exploring party for the benefit of the Guatusos, but no single volunteer answered our advertisements in San Jose de Costa Rica; I have lived to congratulate myself on that disappointment.  Since my day a road has been cut through their wilds to Limon, certain luckless Britons having found the money for a railway; but an engineer who visited the coast but two years ago informs me that no one ever wandered into “the bush.”  Collectors have not been there, assuredly.  So there may be connecting links between C.  Dowiana and C. aurea in that vast wilderness, but it is quite possible there are none.

Words could not picture the glory of these marvels.  In each the scheme of colour is yellow and crimson, but there are important modifications.  Yellow is the ground all through in Cattleya aurea—­sepals, petals, and lip; unbroken in the two former, in the latter superbly streaked with crimson.  But Cattleya Dowiana shows crimson pencillings on its sepals, while the ground colour of the lip is crimson, broadly lined and reticulated with gold.  Imagine four of these noble flowers on one stalk, each half a foot across!  But it lies beyond the power of imagination.