ORCHIDS. 49 
flowers fade, thither it will return, and grow and 
grow, please Heaven, until next summer it rejoices 
me again ; and so, year by year, till the wood rots. 
Then carefully I shall transfer it to a larger perch 
and resume. Probably I shall sever the bulbs 
without disturbing them, and in seasons following 
two spikes will push—then three, then a number, 
multiplying and multiplying when my remotest 
posterity is extinct. That is, so Nature orders it; 
whether my descendants will be careful to allow 
her fair play depends on circumstances over which 
I have not the least control. 
For among their innumerable claims to a place 
apart among all things created, orchids may boast 
immortality. Said Sir Trevor Lawrence, in the 
speech which opened our famous Congress, 1885 : 
“TI do not see, in the case of most of them, the 
least reason why they shouid ever die. The parts 
of the orchidez are annually reproduced ina great 
many instances, and there is really no reason they 
should not live for ever unless, as is generally the 
case with them in captivity, they be killed by 
errors in cultivation.” Sir Trevor was addressing 
an assemblage of authorities—a parterre of kings 
in the empire of botany—or he might have enlarged 
upon this text. 
The epiphytal orchid, to speak generally, and to 
E 
