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Glorious beyond all our fancy can conceive, must be the show in those lonely forest churches, which no European visits save the "collector," on a feast day. Mr. Roezl, whose name is so familiar to botanists, left a description of the scene that time he first beheld the Flor de Majo. The church was hung with garlands of it, he says, and such emotions seized him at the view that he choked.

Sander had a living faith in his old friend's sagacity. Forthwith he despatched a collector to the spot which Roezl had named but not visited and found the treasure. The legends of orchidology will be gathered one day, perhaps; and if the editor be competent, his volume should be almost as interesting to the public as to the cognoscenti.

Of all the cultivated Masdevallias, none are so weirdly strange and fascinating as is the species M. chimaera, which is so well illustrated in the accompany engraving. This singular plant was discovered by Benedict Roezl, and about 1872 or 1873 I remember M. Lucien Linden calling upon me one day, and among other rarities showing me a dried flower of this species.

Upon the other hand, Odontoglossums show no such daintiness of growth in our houses. They flourish at any height, if the general conditions be suitable. Mr. Roezl discovered a secret nevertheless, and in good time we shall learn further. To the Royal Horticultural Society of England belongs the honour of first importing orchids methodically and scientifically. Messrs.

But the moral to be drawn is that a country once stripped will not be reclothed. I interpolate here a profound observation of Mr. Roezl. That wonderful man remarked that Odontoglossums grow upon branches thirty feet above the ground. It is rare to find them at thirty-five feet, rarer at twenty-five; at greater and less heights they do not exist.

But this is a beauty of general effect, which must not be analyzed, as I think. Odontoglossum vexillarium is brought from Colombia. There are two forms: the one small, evenly red, flowering in autumn was discovered by Frank Klaboch, nephew to the famous Roezl, on the Dagua River, in Antioquia.

On the day they were put up to auction news of Livingstone's death arrived, and in a flash of inspiration Roezl christened his novelty M. Livingstoniana. Few, indeed, even among authorities, know where that rarest of Masdevallias has its home; none have reached Europe since. A pretty flower it is white, rosy tipped, with yellow "tails."

Possibly it was some Indian report which had slipped his recollection that led Roezl to predict the discovery of a new Odontoglot, unlike any other, in the very district where Od. Harryanum was found after his death, though the story is quoted as an example of that instinct which guides the heaven-born collector.

Roezl proceeds to speak of bouquets of Masdevallia Harryana three feet across, and so forth. The natives showed him "gardens" devoted to this species, for the ornament of their church; it was not cultivated, of course, but evidently planted. They were acres in extent.

Roezl and the early collectors had a "good time," buying these semi-sacred flowers from the priests, bribing the parishioners to steal them, or, when occasion served, playing the thief themselves. But the game is nearly up. Seldom now can a piece of Cat. Skinneri alba be obtained by honest means, and when a collector arrives guards are set upon the churches that still keep their decoration.