stream is literally bordered with it in the month of March. 

 Sir James Smith suggests that, the very name Disa, from 

 A»?, Jupiter, to express a female divinity, was given by 

 Burgius, " in allusion to the magnificence and beauty of 

 the flower, exceeding most of its tribe, and to preserve an 

 analogy with some others of that tribe, Arethusa, Cypripe- 

 dium, Serapias," &c. Dr. Lindley represents a group of 

 specimens of this plant, in the last plate of his " Sertum 

 Orchidaceum," communicated by Mr. Harvey from the 

 Cape, and of all the splendid flowers in that splendid book, 

 these are, to our mind, the most so. The stems of those 

 individual specimens were two feet and a half high, and the 

 flowers five inches and a half from tip to tip of the expand- 

 ed sepals. Our flowering plants were short of this size when 

 they bloomed in the greenhouse of the Royal Gardens of 

 Kew, in August, 1843. The tubers had recently been im- 

 ported, and may probably never flower a second time : for 

 it is well known that no plants are more difficult to culti- 

 vate for a succession of years than terrestrial Orchide^. 

 In the present instance, it would be scarcely possible to 

 imitate the native soil and climate. " They grow/' says 

 Sir John Herschel, cc where the temperature is, occasion- 

 ally, as low as 31°, and also, occasionally, as high as 

 96°. The habitat is on the margin of pools of standing 

 water, the drainage of the boggy slopes of the mountain, 

 where the roots are immersed. These are dry, or nearly so, 

 in summer. In such localities the plant is of course fre- 

 quently involved in the dense mist of the clouds, which, 

 even in the hottest months, often cover its habitation for a 

 week or a fortnight uninterruptedly." We have, indeed, 

 much to learn respecting the cultivation of bulbs and tubers 

 from the Cape of Good Hope ; and, as our figure of the 

 Disa scarcely needs illustration in words, I shall occupy the 

 remainder of our space in offering some observations on 

 this subject, from the pen of one who is thoroughly ac- 

 quainted with them, in their native mountains and plains, 

 and whose philosophical mind renders his remarks doubly 

 valuable. Sir Johh Herschel thus writes to me, December, 

 1843, from Collingwood, Kent. rt I have tried, without 

 success, the plan of exposing dormant bulbs to perfect dry- 

 ness and much heat, as in their natural condition, where they 

 are often heated to 100° and 120° Fahr., and the more su- 

 perficial and smaller species, perhaps, even so high as 150° 

 Fahr. But the secret seems to lie elsewhere, and I fancy it 

 is the large allowance of strong sunshine and violent cur- 

 rents of wind, which they experience in their natural state, 



which 



