such attention seems necessary, which can only be found elsewhere in
baldest outline if found at all. Everything that relates to orchids has
a charm for me, and I have learned to hold it as an article of faith
that pursuits which interest one member of the cultured public will
interest all, if displayed clearly and pleasantly, in a form to catch
attention at the outset. Savants and professionals have kept the
delights of orchidology to themselves as yet. They smother them in
scientific treatises, or commit them to dry earth burial in gardening
books. Very few outsiders suspect that any amusement could be found
therein. Orchids are environed by mystery, pierced now and again by a
brief announcement that something with an incredible name has been sold
for a fabulous number of guineas; which passing glimpse into an unknown
world makes it more legendary than before. It is high time such noxious
superstitions were dispersed. Surely, I think, this volume will do the
good work--if the public will read it.

The illustrations are reduced from those delightful drawings by Mr. Moon
admired throughout the world in the pages of "Reichenbachia." The
licence to use them is one of many favours for which I am indebted to
the proprietors of that stately work.

I do not give detailed instructions for culture. No one could be more
firmly convinced that a treatise on that subject is needed, for no one
assuredly has learned, by more varied and disastrous experience, to see
the omissions of the text-books. They are written for the initiated,
though designed for the amateur. Naturally it is so. A man who has been
brought up to business can hardly resume the utter ignorance of the
neophyte. Unconsciously he will take a certain degree of knowledge for
granted, and he will neglect to enforce those elementary principles
which are most important of all. Nor is the writer of a gardening book