46 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



of which swathe its bed ; and then for a time at least the water 

 runs in the clear light of the sun. 



It is so difficult to make words alone suggest the picture of 

 the scene which is so familiar to oneself : a narrow streamlet of 

 dark, untransparent water, well rounded masses of small-leaved 

 shrubs, almost suggestive of willows, growing on both banks, 

 right down into the water, their tops extending far above one's 

 head as one floats in the boat ; behind these a few quaintly 

 twisted, much branched trees, with but scanty leafage ; over- 

 head the bluest of blue skies, sun, and the vapour of heat ; in 

 front and behind alike the scene closed by the trees once more 

 weaving their tops together over the dark tunnel ahead from 

 which the stream emerges and over that other dark tunnel into 

 which it passes. 



Here too there are Orchids. From the cluster of five or six 

 immensely tall, slender-stemmed, feather-crowned Palms, which 

 in one place lifts itself above the bushes at the side of 

 the stream up into the sky, hangs down, swaying in the wind, a 

 single, immensely long spray of a very beautiful Vanilla, its 

 heart-shaped leaves alternately arranged, with almost the regu- 

 larity of an architectural ornament, on each side of the central 

 stem, each leaf bearing from its axil a cluster of three or four 

 exquisitely shaped flowers of a pale greenish colour, almost like 

 that of a Devoniensis Rose. 



The Palm so gloriously developed is one which the English 

 nurseryman grows by the thousand and sells in small pots as 

 table plants — Euterpe edulis. The Vanilla I have not yet been 

 able to identify. It particularly affects this special Palm, but 

 never seems to flower, though then generally in extraordinary 

 abundance, except on these long single trails as they float freely 

 from the Palm crown. 



On some of the smallest twigs of the water-washed bushes 

 cling the tiny Iris -like plants bearing comparatively enormous 

 yellow flowers of Oncidium iridifolium. 



Higher up on the same bushes, where the branchlets are 

 somewhat stouter, hang clusters of the dark green leaves of 

 Bodriguezia sccunda, its long spikes of large, intensely ruby- 

 coloured flowers looking more jewel-like than ever when one 

 happens to see them against the strong light of that sky. 



It is a constant wonder to me that the better forms of this 



