154 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE. 
vain. There, among a coterie of its kind, in blushing conscious- 
ness, more sinned against than sinning, stood the poor innocent 
which was the talk of the town, a Cypripedium mongrel, flanked 
on either side by the two helpless parent species. 
Twelve years of eager waiting, I was told, had this very week 
rewarded the “culturist” with the first fruit of this unnatural 
union. An “improvement,” it was called, and one in which the 
instigator seemed to take as much pride as though the waif had 
deserved the Lord’s blessing. 
Those voluptuous, oppressive roses, too, which, like the fair 
ones of certain Oriental countries, are admired, it would seem, in 
proportion to their overgrowth, all “improved,” we are told, from 
“a mere wild rose.” O pagan marplot! How had your enter- 
taining courtesy changed to gall could you have read the vigor- 
ous pitying comment beneath the non-committal exterior of your 
guest! How much else of the mysteries of that hybrid depart- 
ment would have been disclosed to his scientific scrutiny had he 
dared intimate that he preferred the Lord’s Cypripedium even to 
Smith’s, and the eglantine of Parnassus to the “improved Ori- 
ental Beauty” or the Souvenzr de Grande Duchesse de Paragon, 
Splendidissimum, superbum grandiforum! Six thousand dollars 
‘for a mongrel tulip, when a pure type, direct from the divine 
hand, might be had for the asking! 
With what a sigh of relief and exaltation of spirit do I leave 
the degenerate precincts of a garden such as this for the wild 
garden of innocence and peace! 
Truly has Goethe said, ‘Some flowers are only lovely to the 
eye, but others are lovely to the heart.” For whatever of purely 
sensuous or intellectual delight the conservatory may hold for us, 
it is to the wild garden that we turn for the higher delights of 
the spirit. Though the apple of the Hesperides bloom there, 
we shall miss its golden fruit. 
To be brought face to face with one of those wondrous 
orchids of the tropics—the Ovxcezdium papilio or Spirito santo, 
even robbed of the magic attribute of their native environment— 
is indeed a memorable experience; but what compared to the 
