_Aristolochia elegans_, figured in dark red on white ground like a
sublime cretonne--and a new variety of Impatiens; he distributes the
latter presently, and gentlemen adorn their coats with the pale crimson
flower.

Excitement does not often run so high as in the times, which most of
those present can recall, when orchids common now were treasured by
millionaires. Steam, and the commercial enterprise it fosters, have so
multiplied our stocks, that shillings--or pence, often enough--represent
the guineas of twenty years back. There are many here, scarcely yet
grey, who could describe the scene when _Masdevallia Tovarensis_ first
covered the stages of an auction-room. Its dainty white flowers had been
known for several years. A resident in the German colony at Tovar, New
Granada, sent one plant to a friend at Manchester, by whom it was
divided. Each fragment brought a great sum, and the purchasers repeated
this operation as fast as their morsels grew. Thus a conventional price
was established--one guinea per leaf. Importers were few in those days,
and the number of Tovars in South America bewildered them. At length
Messrs. Sander got on the track, and commissioned Mr. Arnold to solve
the problem. Arnold was a man of great energy and warm temper. Legend
reports that he threw up the undertaking once because a gun offered him
was second-hand; his prudence was vindicated afterwards by the
misfortune of a _confrère_, poor Berggren, whose second-hand gun,
presented by a Belgian employer, burst at a critical moment and crippled
him for life. At the very moment of starting, Arnold had trouble with
the railway officials. He was taking a quantity of Sphagnum moss in
which to wrap the precious things, and they refused to let him carry it
by passenger train. The station-master at Waterloo had never felt the
atmosphere so warm, they say. In brief, this was a man who stood no
nonsense.