About Orchids - A Chat by Frederick Boyle
page 44 of 179 (24%)
page 44 of 179 (24%)
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of growing are incapable of pranks. For one shilling he can buy a manual
which will teach him what these species are, and most of the things necessary for him to understand besides. An expenditure of five pounds will set him up for life and beyond--since orchids are immortal. Nothing else is needed save intelligence. Not even heat, since his collection will be "cool" naturally; if frost be excluded, that is enough. I should not have ventured to say this some few years ago--before, in fact, I had visited St. Albans. But in the cool house of that palace of enchantment with which Mr. Sander has adorned the antique borough, before the heating arrangements were quite complete though the shelves were occupied, often the glass would fall very low into the thirties. I could never learn distinctly that mischief followed, though Mr. Godseff did not like it at all. One who beheld the sight when those fields of Odontoglossum burst into bloom might well entertain a doubt whether improvement was possible. There is nothing to approach it in this lower world. I cannot forbear to indicate one picture in the grand gallery. Fancy a corridor four hundred feet long, six wide, roofed with square baskets hanging from the glass as close as they will fit. Suspend to each of these--how many hundreds or thousands has never been computed--one or more garlands of snowy flowers, a thicket overhead such as one might behold in a tropic forest, with myriads of white butterflies clustering amongst the vines. But imagination cannot bear mortal man thus far. "Upon the banks of Paradise" those "twa clerks" may have seen the like; yet, had they done so their hats would have been adorned not with "the birk," but with plumes of _Odontoglossum citrosmum_. I have but another word to say. If any of the class to whom I appeal incline to let "I dare not wait upon I would," hear the experience of a |
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