26 ABOUT ORCHIDS. 
longer. As the mysteries and superstitions en- 
vironing the orchid are dispersed, our small and 
select throng of buyers will be swamped, no 
doubt ; and if a certain pleasing feature of the 
business be lost, all who love the flower and their 
fellow-men alike will cheerfully submit. 
The talk is of orchids mostly, as these gentlemen 
stroll along the tables, lifting a root and scruti- 
nizing it with practised glance that measures its 
vital strength in a second. But nurserymen take 
advantage of the gathering to show any curious or 
striking flower they chance to have at the moment. 
Mr. Bull’s representative goes round, showing to 
one and another the contents of a little box—a 
lovely bloom of Aristolochia elegans, figured in 
dark red on white ground like a sublime cretonne 
—and a new variety of Impatiens; he distributes 
the latter presently, and gentlemen adorn their 
coats with the pale crimson flower. 
Excitement does not often run so high as in the 
times, which most of those present can recall, 
when orchids common now were treasured by 
millionaires. Steam, and the commercial enter- 
prise it fosters, have so multiplied our stocks, 
that shillings—or pence, often enough—represent 
the guineas of twenty years back. There are 
many here, scarcely yet grey, who could describe 
