202 THE ORCHID REVIEW. 
A NEWSPAPER CORRESPONDENT ON ORCHIDS, 
Tue following article appeared in the Daily Mail for May 6th last, under 
the title—‘‘ Most Rare: Flowers that cost lives to secure,” and is 
sufficiently amusing for reproduction in our pages. It might have appeared 
under the titlek— The Romance of Orchidology.” 
When you think of it, it is strange that the Orchid should find so many 
admirers, and be raised by them on a pedestal high above every other 
flower that grows. It is curiously shaped, true, and its petals are richly 
hued, but it gives forth no sweet perfume, for when it is not scentless its 
odour is unpleasant. Still, the fact remains, the Orchid is the rarest and 
most valuable of all flowers. There are some varieties, even, that exist 
only in tradition, and have been seen only by savages in the dense tropical 
forests where they grow. 
Yet so great is the pecuniary reward for these rare and wonderful 
flowers that men are continually risking and losing their lives in the 
attempt to obtain the plants which produce them. For it is in fever 
haunted jungles that the most prized and rarest Orchids are to be found. 
Another thing that makes these rare bulbs worth many times their 
weight in gold is that after the Orchid hunter has returned triumphant, 
perhaps dying, to the coast, the bulbs must be watched and tended 
unremittingly on the long voyage home, and even then they may die 
before they have produced more than a single flower, or even none at all. 
The rarest of all the varieties of Orchids are the blue ones, and the list 
of these is short indeed, even when those which exist only in the tales of 
Orchid hunters are taken into account. One kind, the blue Calanthe,§ 
said to grow in Burmah. The variety has been much sought after, but 
without Success, as the country in which it grows literally swarms with 
tigers and robbers. 
A single specimen of the blue and white Cypripedium is known to have 
reached England, but it has not yet flowered. It was found in Wester 
Borneo, by a hunter named Ericcson. 
In searching for this flower its discoverer for days followed a path knee 
deep in mud, through a swamp, and at night slept standing, PtOPP’ 
against a tree. When he reached the coast with his treasure it took him 
Some months to recuperate, and the last heard of him was that he Ee 
again plunged into the unknown in search of other rare varieties 
Orchids. 
In the Solomon Islands is the home of a species of Orchid, which grows 
there in every hue. But there cannibalism is still all but unch 
Orchid hunters who have ventured there aver that the natives when 
_offer human sacrifices to their gods load the victims with garlands of tee 
eee ee 
