66 MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN. 
numerous other disappointments of that sort he said I 
would find, but, suffice it to say that, being eager, having 
all the eagerness of a young convert, I went to work 
to collect a few plants, and, later on, I collected a 
few orchids. And let me say that the first orchid I ever 
saw was a very solitary plant in a neighboring greenhouse. 
I did not know what it was. I simply saw on the label the 
name, and it was even wrongly named, as I learned after- 
wards. I thought I would buy a few orchids, and wrote 
to a friend of mine, who was a dealer, to order a dozen 
plants; but on the way to the post-office it occurred to me 
that a dozen might bankrupt me entirely. I did not know 
what they would cost, and I changed the letter before it 
went into the mail and asked the price first. I bought the 
dozen, however, and with that beginning I began the 
cultivation of orchids. To show that one as inexperienced 
as myself can succeed in keeping alive orchids, I will say 
that I think the majority of that dozen are to-day alive in 
my greenhouse. I had no greenhouse, strictly speaking, 
then,— nothing in the world but alittle conservatory. But 
from the reading I did I concluded that I must have the 
requisite temperature for the hot-house orchids, and those 
that I had were ones adapted to medium temperature, and 
for the cooler temperature I subdivided that portion again. 
Later on, of course, I became a little more pretentious ; 
and where then I had a dozen, I perhaps have now two 
hundred dozen. 
Enthusiasts have said that there is a degree of intelli- 
gence in an orchid kindred to the intelligence that is in man. 
That as man is the noblest of the animal creation, endowed 
with the faculty of looking his Creator in the face and 
having an intellect to express his thoughts, the orchid, being 
the last created specimen of the floral kingdom, has some 
of those attributes. Ido not say so myself, I am not so 
much of a crank as that, but there is something in the 
modern orchid corresponding to man. There are no traces 
of orchids found in the clay formations. No geologists 
