NEWS OF SPRING 



the real, the great miracle begins where our power of vision 

 ends. 



17 



I have this moment found, in an untilled corner of the 

 olive-yard a splendid sprig of Loroglossum hiricinum, a 

 variety which, for I know not what reason (perhaps it is very- 

 rare in England), Darwin omitted to study. It is certainly 

 the most remarkable, the most fantastic, the most astounding 

 of all our native Orchids. If it were of the size of the Amer- 

 ican Orchids, one might declare that there is no more fanci- 

 ful plant in existence. Imagine a thyrse, like that of the 

 Hyacinth, but twice as tall. It is symmetrically adorned with 

 ill-favoured, three-cornered flowers, of a greenish white 

 stippled with pale violet. The lower petal, embellished at its 

 source with bronzed wattles, long, drooping moustaches and 

 sinister-looking lilac buboes, stretches out interminably, 

 madly, unreally, in the shape of a corkscrew riband of the 

 colour assumed by drowned men after a month's immersion 

 in the river. From the whole, which conjures up the idea of 

 the most fearsome maladies and seems to blossom in some dim 

 land of mocking nightmares and witcheries, there issues a 

 potent and abominable stench as of a poisoned goat, which 



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