AN ORCHID FARM, 197 
months, or nine. I imagine that for stateliness and 
delicacy combined there are no plants that excel 
the Sobralia. At any single point they may be 
surpassed—among orchids, be it understood, by 
nothing else in Nature’s realm—but their magnifi- 
cence and grace together cannot be outshone. 
I must not dwell upon the marvels here, in 
front, on either side, and above—a hint is enough. 
There are baskets of Lela anceps three feet across, 
lifted bodily from the tree in their native forest 
where they had grown perhaps for centuries. One 
of them—the white variety, too, which esthetic 
infidels might adore, though they believed in 
nothing—opened a hundred spikes at Christmas 
time; we do not concern ourselves with minute 
reckonings here. But an enthusiastic novice 
counted the flowers blooming one day on that 
huge mass of La/za albida yonder, and they num- 
bered two hundred and eleven—unless, as some 
say, this was the quantity of “spikes,” in which 
case one must have to multiply by two or three. 
Such incidents may be taken for granted at the farm. 
But we must not pass a new orchid, quite dis- 
tinct and supremely beautiful, for which Professor 
Reichenbach has not yet found a name sufficiently 
appreciative. Only eight pieces were discovered, 
whence we must suspect that it is very rare at 
