78 ABOUT ORCHIDS. 
when a comrade looses his grip of that treasure. 
For them it is needless to add that everything else 
went to the bottom.’ 
One is tempted to linger among the Odonto- 
clots, though time is pressing. In no class of 
orchids are natural hybrids so mysterious and 
frequent. Sometimes one can detect the parent- 
age ; in such cases, doubtless, the crossing occurred 
but a few generations back: as a rule, however, 
such plants are the result of breeding in and in 
from age to age, causing all manner of delightful 
complications. How many can trace the lineage 
of Mr. Bull’s Od. delectabtle—ivory white, tinged 
with rose, strikingly blotched with red and showing 
a golden labellum? or Mr. Sander’s Od. Alberiz- 
Edwardi, which has a broad soft margin of gold 
about its stately petals? Another is rosy white, 
closely splashed with pale purple, and dotted 
round the edge with spots of the same tint so 
thickly placed that they resemble a fringe. Such 
marvels turn up in an importation without the 
slightest warning—no peculiarity betrays them 
until the flowers open ; when the lucky purchaser 
discovers that a plant for which he gave perhaps 
a shilling is worth an indefinite number of guineas. 
Lycaste also is a genus peculiar to America, 
1 See a letter at p. 92. 
