gress of your education. That chance
lies, as has been said, in the general conditions--the degree of
moisture you can keep in the air, the ventilation, and the light. These
secured, you may turn up the books, consult the authorities, and
gradually accumulate the knowledge which will enable you to satisfy the
preferences of each class. So, in good time, you may enjoy such a thrill
of pleasure as I felt the other day when a great pundit was good enough
to pay me a call. He entered my tiny Odontoglossum house, looked round,
looked round again, and turned to me. "Sir," he said, "we don't call
this an amateur's collection!"

I have jotted down such hints of my experience as may be valuable to
others, who, as Juvenal put it, own but a single lizard's run of earth.
That space is enough to yield endless pleasure, amusement, and indeed
profit, if a man cultivate it himself. Enthusiast as I am, I would not
accept another foot of garden.[1]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: It is not inappropriate to record that when these articles
were published in the _St. James' Gazette_, the editor received several
communications warning him that his contributor was abusing his good
faith--to put it in the mild French phrase. Happily, my friend was able
to reply that he could personally vouch for the statements.]

AN ORCHID SALE.

Shortly after noon on a sale day, the habitual customers of Messrs.
Protheroe and Morris begin to assemble in Cheapside. On tables of
roughest plank round the auction-rooms there, are neatly ranged the
various lots; bulbs and sticks of every shape, big and little, withered
or green, dull or shining, with a brown leaf here and there, or a mass
of roots dry as last year's bracken. No promise do they suggest of the
brilliant colours and strange forms buried in embryo within their
uncouth bulk. On a cross table stand some dozens of "established" plants
in pots and baskets, which the owners would like to part with. Their
growths of this year are verdant, but the old bulbs look almost as
sapless as those new arrivals. Very few are in flower just now--July
and August are a time of pause betwixt the glories of the Spring
and the milder effulgence of Autumn. Some great Dendrobes--_D.
Dalhousianum_--are bursting into untimely bloom, betraying to the
initiated that their "establishment" is little more than a phrase. Those
garlands of bud were conceived, so to speak, in Indian forests, have
lain dormant through the long v