y pretty too are
some of them, as _B. Lobbii_. Its clear, clean, orange-creamy hue is
delightful to behold. The lip, so delicately balanced, quivers at every
breath. If the slender stem be bent back, as by a fly alighting on the
column, that quivering cap turns and hangs imminent; another tiny shake,
as though the fly approached the nectary, and it falls plump, head over
heels, like a shot, imprisoning the insect. Thus the flower is
impregnated. If we wished to excite a thoughtful child's interest in
botany--not regardless of the sense of beauty either--we should make an
investment in _Bulbophyllum Lobbii_. _Bulbophyllum Dearei_ also is
pretty--golden ochre spotted red, with a wide dorsal sepal, very narrow
petals flying behind, lower sepals broadly striped with red, and a
yellow lip, upon a hinge, of course; but the gymnastic performances of
this species are not so impressive as in most of its kin.

A new Bulbophyllum, _B. Godseffianum_, has lately been brought from the
Philippines, contrived on the same principle, but even more charming.
The flowers, two inches broad, have the colour of "old gold," with
stripes of crimson on the petals, and the dorsal sepal shows membranes
almost transparent, which have the effect of silver embroidery.

Until _B. Beccarii_ was introduced, from Borneo, in 1867, the
Grammatophyllums were regarded as monsters incomparable. Mr. Arthur
Keyser, Resident Magistrate at Selangor, in the Straits Settlement,
tells of one which he gathered on a Durian tree, seven feet two inches
high, thirteen feet six inches across, bearing seven spikes of flower,
the longest eight feet six inches--a weight which fifteen men could only
just carry. Mr. F.W. Burbidge heard a tree fall in the jungle one night
when he was four miles away, and on visiting the spot, he found, "right
in the collar of the trunk, a Grammatophyllum big enough to fill a
Pickford's van, just opening its golden-brown spotted flowers, on stout
spikes two yards long." It is not to be hoped that we shall ever see
monsters like these in Europe. The genus, indeed, is unruly. _G.
speciosum_ has been grown to six feet high, I believe, which is big
enough to satisfy the modest amateur, especially when it develops leaves
two feet long. The flowers are--that is, they ought to be--six inches in
diameter, rich yellow, blotched with reddish purple. They have some
giants at Kew now, of which fine things are expected. _G.
Measureseanum_, named after Mr. M