, and he was obliged to give them up.
He was never tired of admiring their varied forms and colours, or
explaining to friends the wonderful apparatus by which many of them were
fertilised. The following letter shows his enthusiasm for orchids:

TO Miss VIOLET WALLACE

_Parkstone, Dorset. November_ 25, 1894.

My dear Violet,-- ... I have found a doctor at Poole (Mr. Turner) who
has two nice orchid houses which he attends to entirely himself, and as
I can thus get advice and sympathy from a fellow maniac (though he _is_
a public vaccinator!) my love of orchids is again aroused to fever-heat,
and I have made some alterations in the greenhouse which will better
adapt it for orchid growing, and have bought a few handsome kinds very
cheap, and these give me a lot of extra work and amusement....

* * * * *

TO HIS WIFE

_Hotel du Glacier du Rhone. Wednesday evening, [July, 1895]._

My dear Annie,--I send you now a box of plants I got on both sides of
the Furka Pass yesterday, and about here to-day. The Furka Pass on both
sides is a perfect flower-garden, and the two sides have mostly
different species. The violets and anemones were lovely, and I have got
two species of glorious gentians.... All the flowers in the box are very
choice species, and have been carefully dug up, and having seen how they
grow, I have been thinking of a plan of making a little bed for them on
the top of the new rockery where there is now nothing particular. Will
you please plant them out carefully in the zinc tray of peat and
sphagnum that stands outside near the little greenhouse door? Just lift
up the sphagnum and see if the earth beneath is moist, if not give it a
soaking. Then put them all in, the short-rooted ones in the sphagnum
only, the others through into the peat. Then give them a good syringing
and put the tray under the shelf outside the greenhouse, and cover with
newspaper for a day or two. After that I think they will do, keeping
them moist if the weather is dry. I am getting hosts of curiosities.
To-day we found four or five species of willows from 1/4 in. to 2 in.
high, and other rarities.... In haste for post and dinner.--Your ever
affectionate

ALFRED R. WALLACE.

* * * * *

TO MISS VIOLET WALLACE

_Parkstone, Dorset. October 22, 1897._

My dear Violet,--In your previous letter you asked me the conundrum, Why
does a wagtail wag its tail? That's qu