op, however, are ranged flowering plants
of Odontoglossum grande which make a blaze in their season--three to six
blooms upon a spike, the smallest of them four inches across. Overhead is
a long row of Laelia Jongheana--some three hundred of them here and
elsewhere. It is a species with a history, and I venture to transcribe the
account which I published in the _Pall Mall Gazette_, July 18, 1899.

'A SENSATION FOR THE ELECT.--The general public will hear without emotion
that Laelia Jongheana has been rediscovered. The name is vaguely
suggestive of orchids--things delightful in a show, or indeed elsewhere,
when in bloom, but not exhilarating to read about. Therefore I call the
news a sensation for the elect. At the present moment, I believe, only one
plant of L. Jongheana is established in this country, among Baron
Schroeder's wonders. Though its history is lost this must be a lonely
survivor of those which reached Europe in 1855--a generation and a half
ago. It is not to be alleged that no civilised mortal has beheld the
precious weed in its native forests since that date; but no one has
mentioned the spectacle, and assuredly no one has troubled to gather
plants. Registered long since among the "Lost Orchids," which should bring
a little fortune to the discoverer, native botanists and dealers in all
parts of South America have been looking out. And the collectors! For
forty years past not one of the multitude has left the shores of Europe or
the United States, bound for the Cattleya realm, without special
instructions to watch and pray for L. Jongheana. More and more pressing
grew the exhortations as years went by and prices mounted higher, until of
late they subsided in despair. Yet the flower is almost conspicuous enough
to be a landmark, and it does not hide in the tree-tops either, like so
many.

'Every one who takes interest in orchids will be prepared already to hear
that Messrs. Sander are the men of fate. How many of such spells have they
broken! Without book I recall Oncidium splendidum, of which not a plant
remained in Europe, nor a hint of the country where it grew; the "scarlet
Phalaenopsis" of native legend, never beheld of white man, which, in fact,
proved to be brick-red; Cattleya labiata, the Lost Orchid _par
excellence_, vainly sought from 1818 to 1889. The recovery of Dendrobium
Schroederium was chronicled by every daily paper in London, or almost, with
a leader, when a skull was shown in Protheroe's R