58 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



Their brilliant colors and graceful or grotesque shapes render 

 them as peculiarly attractive to the eye, as their fragrance is 

 pleasing to the sense of smell, while from the fact that unlike all 

 other plants which have yet been discovered, they need no soil 

 to grow upon, there is a shade of mystery and romance thrown 

 about them which easily explains the reverence in which they 

 are held in the countries where they grow. These plants are 

 known to botanists as orchidaceee, and to common people as 

 orchids, or air plants. Hanging over the basin in which the 

 royal Victoria Regia floats in her majesty at Palace Garden, is a 

 collection of over fifty varieties of these curious plants ; and as 

 we presume all our readers who have not the opportunity to see 

 them will be glad to know something of their nature and appear- 

 ance, we have spent some time in examining the plants and 

 searching their history. 



Loudon, that greatest of botanical encyclopedists, writes more 

 fully upon their varieties than any other person, but the frag- 

 mentary history which he found space for in his cumbrous vol- 

 ume, even with the aid of his copious quotations from Bateman, 

 is far too brief. In Demerara, that deadliest and most insidious 

 of all poisons, Wourali, is thickened by the viscid juice of one 

 of the orchidaceee, and in Amboyna, says Bateman, the true 

 "Elixir of Love" is prepared from the minute farina-like seeds 

 of Grammatophyllum speciosum. In superstitious Mexico, the 

 sentimental people give to the plants a mystic power of speaking 

 the language of grief and joy, of friendly greeting, love, and bit- 

 ter hatred, and even endue the spiritu-sanctu species with a holy 

 influence. Not an infant is baptized, not a marriage celebrated, 

 not a funeral obsequy performed, at which the aid of these flow- 

 ers is not invoked to give expression to their feelings ; they are 

 offered by the devotee at the shrine of his favorite saint, by the 

 lover at the feet of his mistress, and by the sorrowing survivor 

 at the grave of his friend. Whether, in short, on fast days or feast 

 days, on occasion of rejoicing or in moments of distress, these flow- 

 ers are sought for, and regarded as indispensable. " Flor de los 

 Santos," "Flor de Corpus," "Florde los Muertos," "Florde 

 Maio," "No me olvides," (forget-me-not,) are but a few names of 

 the many which might be cited to prove the high consideration 

 in which the favorites are held in the new world. In the East 

 Indies, Rumphius tells us, with every appearance of self-assu- 

 rance, the flowers shrink from contact with persons of low caste, 



