has to bring back his loaded mules, or Indians, over the same pathless
waste. The Roraima Mountain begins to be regarded as quite easy travel
for the orchid-hunter nowadays. If I mention that the canoe-work on this
route demands thirty-two portages, thirty-two loadings and unloadings of
the cargo, the reader can judge what a "difficult road" must be.
Ascending the Roraima, Mr. Dressel, collecting for Mr. Sander, lost his
herbarium in the Essequibo River. Savants alone are able to estimate the
awful nature of the crisis when a comrade looses his grip of that
treasure. For them it is needless to add that everything else went to
the bottom.[2]

One is tempted to linger among the Odontoglots, though time is pressing.
In no class of orchids are natural hybrids so mysterious and frequent.
Sometimes one can detect the parentage; in such cases, doubtless, the
crossing occurred but a few generations back: as a rule, however, such
plants are the result of breeding in and in from age to age, causing all
manner of delightful complications. How many can trace the lineage of
Mr. Bull's _Od. delectabile_--ivory white, tinged with rose, strikingly
blotched with red and showing a golden labellum? or Mr. Sander's _Od.
Alberti-Edwardi_, which has a broad soft margin of gold about its
stately petals? Another is rosy white, closely splashed with pale
purple, and dotted round the edge with spots of the same tint so thickly
placed that they resemble a fringe. Such marvels turn up in an
importation without the slightest warning--no peculiarity betrays them
until the flowers open; when the lucky purchaser discovers that a plant
for which he gave perhaps a shilling is worth an indefinite number of
guineas.

Lycaste also is a genus peculiar to America, such a favourite among
those who know its merits that the species _L. Skinneri_ is called the