﻿THE ORCHID REVIEW. 



[May, 1904. 



We left the house, and he pointed out a little purple flower among the 

 grass. " My first Orchid," he said. " Not exactly that one, of course, but 

 it's the first Orchid I remember, and the first I ever grew." It was 

 Orchis mascula, and it formed quite a picture in the grass— a rosette of 

 bright green leaves covered with blackish purple blotches, and a spike of 

 brilliant rose-purple flowers. His story is worth recording, and was some- 

 thing like this:—" When I was a very small boy I found in a meadow near 

 a brook a strange flower, which I had never seen before, so I took it 

 home. My father said it was a British Orchid, called Orchis mascula, and 

 that it was common in the meadows over the brook. But those 

 meadows were forbidden ground. The brook itself was an obstacle, and 

 formed the boundary between ours and a neighbouring parish, and there 

 was a warning against trespassers. However, I reconnoitred the situation, 

 and found that at one spot some poles extended from a hedge across the 

 stream, to prevent cattle from straying further down ; and the coast seemed 

 clear. Some time later a small boy might have been seen creeping back 

 over that frail bridge with an armful of the purple flowers, which 

 were borne home in triumph, and placed in a large jar in the dining 

 room. But shortly afterwards they were ignominously expelled, for the 

 odour was overpowering, and I have more than once since found them 

 quite unsuitable for room decoration on this account." 



I got rather interested in the story, and one thing that struck me as 

 curious was that the Orchids should be so much more common on one side 

 of the brook than the other. But it appeared that there was a very satis- 

 factory explanation. It was simply a case of the land being drained on 

 one side of the brook. These adjacent properties belonged to different 

 owners, and one of them had drained his land very efficiently and adopted 

 a system of high-class farming, while the other allowed things to take their 

 natural course. The result was that the meadows on one side of the brook 

 produced chiefly grass for grazing purposes, while on the other there was a 

 great admixture of various weeds, with cowslips innumerable, and here and 

 there were spots that were quite purple with the Orchis at flowering time. 



However, they were not all on the other side of the brook, and when 

 the small boy had attained to somewhat larger growth, and had a garden of 

 his own, it contained also an Orchid collection, for he dug up some of the 

 roots and planted them, and one day he found a pure white variety, which 

 he also transplanted, and which flowered year after year, until something 

 more important than amateur horticulture claimed his attention for a time. 

 The Orchid collection was not a very pretentious affair, the plants being 

 simply planted with a protecting border of stones let into the ground 



