146 THE ORCHID REVIEW. SEPt.-OcT., 1919] 
Dibdin’s minstrelsy, they too, have ‘‘ gone aloft.” Above you is a world of 
light and air and sunshine, which birds, insects, and flowers alike enjoy. 
This is in the forest primaeval, but near clearings, or on the skirts of the 
forest near rivers, which let in the light and air, the Phalznopsis and other 
epiphytes are less ambitious, and they may then be found in positions but 
little above the more plebeian terrestrial kinds of vegetation. This is also 
the case when, as sometimes happens, they are found on the trees which 
fringe little islands; and then not only do the plants receive a good deal of 
sunshine as it streams through the leafy twigs of the branches to which they 
cling, but it is also reflected back again from the glistening sea. The 
intense light in which they thus exist, added to the fervent heat and the 
deluge of rain in which it falls during six or seven months of the year, 
accounts for the enormous leaf and root growth made by these plants in 
their native habitats. The flowering of the plants is not so extraordinary, 
indeed rather disappointing, after the results which may be seen in English 
gardens. It is not so much the paucity of flowers produced, however, as 
their early destruction caused by the “ unbidden guests” the Orchids are 
made to entertain. 
High up overhead the most lovely Orchids hold their court in the 
sunshine: here they are really “at home” to their winged visitors. Now 
and then, however, you come across a newly-fallen tree—a very monarch of 
the woods—which has succumbed to old age and rude weather at last, and 
has sunk to the earth from which it sprung as a seedling generations ago; 
its branches laden with everything inanimate, which had made a home in 
its branches. Some of these ruined trunks are perfect gardens of beauty, 
wreathed with graceful climbing plants, and gay with flowers and foliage. 
The fall of a large tree, and its smaller dependants, lets in the sun, and so 
the epiphytes do not suffer much for a time; and one may thus observe 
them in all their beauty. : 
Here, right in the collar of the tree, is a plant of the Grammatophyllum 
Orchid, big enough to fill a Pickford’s van, and just now opening its golden- 
brown spotted flowers on stout spikes two yards long. There, on that top- 
most branch, is a mass of the moth Orchid, or Phalznopsis, bearing a 
hundred snowy flowers at least ; and in such healthy vigour is it, that lovers 
of Orchids at home—supposing it could be flashed direct to ‘‘ Stevens’s”’ in 
its present state—would outbid each other for such a glorious prize, until 
the hammer would fall near on a hundred guineas, as it has done beforefor 
exceptional specimens of these lovely flowers. 
Burbidge, it may be added, made a trip to Borneo and the Sulu 
Archipelago, in 1877 and 1878, for Messrs. James Veitch & Sons, and 
among interesting Orchids collected we may mention Phalenopsis Marie, 
' Cypripedium Lawrenceanum, and Aérides Burbidgei. ~ 
