ORCHIDEOUS PLANTS. 



the butterfly-plant (Oncidium papilio) produced at 

 the Chiswick Gardens must still be remembered by 

 many of our readers, and so wonderful is the re- 

 semblance of the vegetable to the insect specimen, 

 floating upon its gossamer-stalk, that even now we 

 can hardly fancy it otherwise than a living creature, 

 were it not even still more like some exquisite pro- 

 duction of fanciful art. Their manner of growth 

 distinct from, though so apparently like, our native 

 misletoe, and other parasitical plants generally re- 

 versing the common order of nature, and throwing 

 summersets with their heels upward and head down- 

 ward one specimen actually sending its roots into 

 the air, and burying its flowers in the soil, living 

 almost entirely on atmospheric moisture, the blos- 

 soms in some species sustained by so slender a thread 

 that they seem to float unsupported in the air, all 

 these things, combined with the most exquisite con- 

 trast of the rarest and most delicate colours in their 

 flowers, are not more extraordinary characteristics 

 of their tribe than is the circumstance that in nearly 

 every variety there exists a remarkable resemblance 

 to some work either of animate nature or of art. 

 Common observation of the pretty specimens of this 

 genus in our own woods and fields has marked this 

 in the names given to the fly, the bee, and the 

 spider-orchis ; * but in the exotic orchises this mi- 

 mickry is still more strongly marked. Besides the 

 butterfly-plant already alluded to, there is the dove- 



* These British species are now transferred by botanists to the 

 genus Ophrys. 



