INTRODUCTION. 



The name Orchid is with most persons associated with the 

 heat and luxuriant vegetation of southern climates, and our 

 North American species are, as a rule, known only to botan- 

 ists. Few in number, terrestrial in their habits, often un- 

 obtrusive in color, almost valueless in trade, they make of 

 themselves no claim to distinction in the vast floral tribe to 

 which they belong; and the rambler in wood or field is sur- 

 prised when told that this or that flower he has brought home 

 is related to the gorgeous and curious plants he has admired in 

 some hot-house. When the Island of Java contains over three 

 hundred species of Orchids, it is but a confession of poverty to 

 state that the section of the United States lying east of the 

 Mississippi and north of North Carolina and Tennessee pro- 

 duces fifty-nine species and varieties ; but when this area is 

 narrowed down to New England and forty-seven are found in 

 the catalogue of her flora, the provincial pride that devotes a 

 special treatise to this little group can be easily understood. 



My own acquaintance with this rural family was for years 

 what might be called a bowing one ; a supposed ability to call 

 its members by name when I saw them and an appreciation of 

 their outward beauty or oddity forming a superficial knowledge 

 with which I was quite content until I began to make a series 

 of sketches of my charming friends. Then, as I observed 

 them more closely in their homes, I realized how little one 

 knows about his neighbors, after all ; discovered that there 

 were brothers and sisters, cousins once or twice removed and 

 other relatives I had never seen, and that these apparently 



