MOORLAND IDYLLS. 



to blossom early in the year, depend for 

 their food-supply upon a bulb or tuber of 

 last season's making. Only in the orchids, 

 however, do you find this curious device 

 of a pair of tubers at once side by side, 

 one being filled and fed, while the other is 

 being slowly devoured and depleted. By 

 the end of the season the new tuber is rich 

 and full to bursting, while the old one is 

 withered, flaccid, and empty. 



From the tuber, in early spring, start the 

 pretty lance-shaped leaves green, dappled 

 with leopard spots of some deep brown 

 pigment. The use and meaning of these 

 beautiful spots on the glossy green foliage 

 no one has yet deciphered; it remains as 

 one of the ten thousand insoluble mysteries 

 of plant existence. That is always so in 

 life. We tell what we know ; but what we 

 know not, who shall count it or number it ? 

 Yet the flowers, after all, are the true centre 

 of interest in the English orchid. Thirty of 

 them in a spike, pale lilac or white, all 

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