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_ 1906] THE CULTIVATION OF OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS. 229 
pedium spectabile, and when we saw it at first I thought of those 
lines from Gray’s Elegy : 
“« Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, 
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.” 
We found it, as large as an Iris, hidden amongst the cedars in the 
damp mold, sometimes pure white in the shade, and where it 
drank in the sunshine, suffused with a rosy purple biush or striped 
on the sabot as if it had been done by some peri. We brought 
home a couple of dozen plants, some in blossom, sometimes two 
on a stem, and others in bud. This was the middle of June, but 
they stood the removal all right after a night’s refreshment in a 
pail of water, and they got well heated in the ground and the un- 
opened buds came out. They were found in a ravine about 100 
feet in depth on either side and about 300 yards wide, with a 
-cedar swamp in the bottom, and a tropical atmosphere, an ideal 
place for orchids. We also found several varieties of Habenaria 
coming into bloom in the swamp, and on the hill-top in a rich 
wood the Showy Orchis in great abundance, just out of bloom a 
week or so, with three or four stems of bloom ona clump which 
had borne from five to six flowers; it was in seed pod at the time. 
In treating them after removal I imitated natural conditions 
as much as possible, dug a trench one and a half feet deep and put 
a bottom ijayer of broken flower pots and stones, on top of that a 
layer of moss from the limestone rocks at the mountain, and again 
on top of that a layer of sphagnum moss, about eight inches of 
moss in all, and on top of that a couple of inches of leaf mould, 
set my plants on it, and again three or four inches of leaf mould 
and swamp muck. 
In April last I sent to Mr. Edward Gillett, of Southwich, 
Mass., U.S., for some bulbs of the native orchids advertised in 
his catalogue. Among the varieties I sent for were: Calypso 
borealis, which grew but did not bloom, but I hope to see it next 
year; Calopogon pulchellus, a dainty little purple-pink flower, very 
beautiful, with from four to five blossoms, which blossomed 
in the same bed with Cypripedium spectabile ; Cypripedium acaule, 
which I| planted in higher ground, and out of a dozen plants I got 
four blooms, very lovely and most delicately veined with pink of 
a reddish hue. Iam very doubtful if I will see it again next year, 
