CHARACTER OF THE FLOWERS OF ORCHIDS. 49 



Eucharis but an ornament? which, fine and beautiful as 

 it may be, is and remains nothing but an embellishment, 

 a rosette. Turn it whichever way you please, it appears 

 the same from any side, and does not enable you to tell 

 which is top or bottom respecting its position on the 

 stalk, if once severed from the ovary. How different 

 an orchid ! Present it in any position you choose, it can 

 be told without hesitation: this way she was attached to 

 the spike, this is the way she looks at you, and there is 

 no margin for doubt about it. They look at us, indeed 

 they have faces, and so many thousands and hundred 

 thousands of orchids with which I have been face to 

 face, I never yet tired to again and again study the 

 character of their kind. They have faces. And who- 

 ever has tried to penetrate the inwardness of their 

 character, he will conceive with me the fact that with 

 the application of orchids in our floral decorations, we 

 are to reach the hight of that art at present possible. 



I have read a great deal of what the botanists wrote 

 about orchids, and when meditating about their writings 

 I put the question to myself: Have they understood in 

 their innermost the life of the orchid flower? Were 

 they conscious of what is revealed to us in every single 

 orchid bloom? But little is told us about that, and 

 sometimes when we do come across attempts to initiate 

 us into the secrets of those beings, we get the unpleas- 

 ant impression that we are confronted with cliche of 

 others' writings. I never have been troubling myself 

 with the obliterated limits of intricate systematic botany, 

 nor have I been favored with leisure to devote myself to 

 the depth of the world unbosomed through the micro- 

 scope. But I have been fortunate enough to keep myself 

 possessed of the nature of a gardener, who has an in- 

 ward persuasion of what his eyes behold, whose mind 



