230 LETTER XIX. 



admiring traveller, suspended from the gigantic arm 

 of some monarch of the forest, they develope flowers 

 of the gayest colours, and the most varied forms, and 

 they often fill the woods at night with their mild and 

 delicate fragrance. For a long time such plants were 

 thought incapable of being made to submit to the 

 care of the gardener, and Europeans remained almost 

 ic^norant of the most curious tribe in the whole 

 vegetable kinsfdom. But it has been discovered of 

 late years that by care and perseverance they may be 

 brought to as much perfection in a hot-house as they 

 acquire in their native woods, and they now, under 

 the name Orchidaceous Epiphytes, form the pride of 

 the collections of England. 



Unfortunately they are of very little known use. 

 Vanilla, which you eat in creams and other sweets, is 

 the pod of a kind which, in the West Indies, creeps 

 over trees and walls like ivy ; and a nutritive sub- 

 stance called Salop is prepared from the tubercles of 

 some kinds of Orchis ; a most meagre catalogue of use- 

 ful properties in a tribe of near two thousand species, 

 but one to which little can be added, if we except 

 what is called the Shoemaker plant (Cyrtopodium 

 Andersonii), whose stems afford a glutinous extract 

 employed by the Brazilians for sticking together thin 

 skins of leather. 



This order, like the two preceding has, as we have 

 seen, an inferior ovary, a character by which they, 

 and several others which I have not time to mention, 

 are readily known. In your study of Monocotyle- 

 donous plants you cannot do better than take this 



