elaborate contrivances are essential. If you would beat Nature, as
here, making invariably such bulbs and flowers as she produces only
under rare conditions, you must follow this system. But orchids are not
exacting.

The house opens, at its further end, in a magnificent structure designed
especially to exhibit plants of warm species in bloom. It is three
hundred feet long, twenty-six wide, eighteen high--the piping laid end
to end, would measure as nearly as possible one mile: we see a practical
illustration of the resources of the establishment, when it is expected
to furnish such a show. Here are stored the huge specimens of
_Cymbidium Lowianum_, nine of which astounded the good people of Berlin
with a display of one hundred and fifty flower spikes, all open at once.
We observe at least a score as well furnished, and hundreds which a
royal gardener would survey with pride. They rise one above another in a
great bank, crowned and brightened by garlands of pale green and
chocolate. Other Cymbidiums are here, but not the beautiful _C.
eburneum_. Its large white flowers, erect on a short spike, not drooping
like these, will be found in a cool house--smelt with delight before
they are found.

Further on we have a bank of Dendrobiums, so densely clothed in bloom
that the leaves are unnoticed. Lovely beyond all to my taste, if,
indeed, one may make a comparison, is _D. luteolum_, with flowers of
palest, tenderest primrose, rarely seen unhappily, for it will not
reconcile itself to our treatment. Then again a bank of Cattleyas, of
Vandas, of miscellaneous genera. The pathway is hedged on one side with
_Begonia coralina_, an unimproved species too straggling of growth and
too small of flower to be worth its room under ordinary conditions; but
a glorious thing here, climbing to the roof, festooned at every season
of the year with countless rosy sprays.

Beyond this show-house lie the small structures devoted to
"hybridization," but I deal with them in another chapter. Here also are
the Phaloenopsis, the very hot Vandas, Bolleas, Pescatoreas, Anaectochili,
and such dainty but capricious beauties.

We enter the second of the range of greenhouses, also devoted to
Odontoglossums, Masdevallias, and "cool" genera, as crowded as the last;
pass down it to the corridor, and return through number three, which is
occupied by Cattleyas and such. There is a lofty mass of rock in front,
with a pool below, and a pleasant sound of splash