and golden, scented blossoms as scarcely any flowers can equal for beauty and 
delicacy of form. These Orchids, with their light green, spear-like leaves, and 
their tall, swaying flower-stalks, grow in groups of forty and fifty together, often 
reflected in the shallow pools of stagnant water round their bases, and tip the 
foreground of the high purple-green forest with a blaze of tender peach-like colour. 
Clumps of a dwarf Palm (Phenix spinosa), which bears a just eatable starveling 
date, hedge in these beautiful Orchids from the wash of the river, and seem a sort 
of water-mark that the tides rarely pass; but the water often leaks through the 
mud and vegetable barrier, and forms inside the ring of dwarf Palms many little 
quiet lagoons, not necessarily unhealthy, for the water is changed and stirred by 
each recurring tide.” 
This plant appears to be plentiful on the banks of the mouths of the rivers 
in South-Western tropical Africa, and we are told it is occasionally submerged, and 
afterwards roasted in soil as hard as bricks, so that it is almost wonderful our 
efforts have been so successful under cultivation; but this is another remarkable 
instance of the cultivator’s skill in getting plants to thrive and to bloom under 
circumstances very different to their surroundings in a state of nature. The 
following are the details of its management, kindly supplied by M. le Due de 
Massa, who has so successfully bloomed this gorgeous plant :—‘‘The compost 
is made up of sharp silver-sand, loam and leaf-mould, with cow-manure added. 
From the end of October till May I keep it in the Indian house, then 
towards the end of April, when I begin to heat my aquarium, I place the plant with 
the pot plunged to within five or six centimetres in water. During the resting 
season I always keep the compost a little moist. The flower spike has been 
produced by a not very strong growth, but it measured two metres eighty centimetres 
high. It has produced at least forty flowers. The first flowers opened about 
November 20th, 1891. It must be re-potted every year towards March or April.” 
AWARDS MADE BY THE OrcHID ComMirres or THE RoyaL HorricuLTuRAL SocrgETY, 
IN THE First QuarTer oF THE YEAR 1892 (concluded from under Plate 456). 
To Messrs. F. Sander and Co., St. Albans, a Silver Banksian Medal for a 
group of Orchids. - 
To E. Miller Mundy, Esq., Shipley Hall, Derby, a Silver Banksian Medal for 
a superb group of Dendrobium Phalenopsis Schroderianum, in variety. 
To Messrs. Charlesworth and Shuttleworth, Clapham, for a group of Oncidiwm 
sarcodes. 
P= ER eS a ene: Ca re 
