346 THE ORCHIDS. 
Now pods, if they are round, that is, alike on all sides, 
bear their seeds in two different ways. Either they havea — 
column of some sort running up through the centre of the — 
pod, and the seeds attached to this, or they have no such — 
column, and the seeds hang upon the inside of the outer | 
wall. There is a great difference in these two modes, 
greater in fact than it is best to trouble the reader with at — 
present. It will be quite enough if he finds out what we 
mean by the modes themselves. Now if we cut across the 
pod of any Orchid, just as we would slice a cucumber, the 
seeds will be found growing on the sides of the interior, and 
not at the centre. 
If, then, we find plants with these marks, to wit: 
- I. Irregular flowers, 
II. Stamens and pistils consolidated, 
HI. Perennial habits ; or seeds round the sides of the pot, 
—then we are safe in looking up to it asa well-accredited 
member of this regal order. Among the sweltering forests 
and jungles of India may be found a small family nis 
sembles these considerably, having flowers not quite regu 
and stamens and pistils partly coherent ; but we know me 
to be mere pretenders, when we find their seeds always 
the centre of the pod instead of on the walls. 
Having thus outlined the characters of this family a sisi 
length, it remains to say a word upon their properties a 
distribution. Two circumstances only can bar these p z 
from any climate, namely, frost and excessive drouths. p 
frost itself, if the degree be not that of the arctic, 1 w 
enough, for there are seventeen genera and fifty-one igi 
reckoned by Gray in the Northern States east a mae 
sissippi, and one of them, Calypso, is nowhere seen but 
cold bogs of the Canadian region. Never rising into ye 
and only rarely to be called shrubs, they stand as ag gi 
most remarkable herbs in all cooler latitudes, y 
moist heats of the tropics they luxuriate as cine os 
on that very peculiar style of growth sometimes, bul 

