SKETCHES OF WILD ORCHIDS IN GUIANA. 



49 



Sterna, and growing in the same places, is a curious little 

 Zygopetalum, as yet, I believe, undescribed. 



Much higher up on the trees, but still completely in the 

 shade of the leafy roof, and almost always overhanging the 

 water, are most attractive looking and handsome-leaved masses 

 of one or more species of Gong or a. From these hang down the 

 necklace-like strings of flowers, which though certainly not 

 showy, and, taking the size of the plant into consideration, not 

 worthy of cultivation in small houses, are most quaint and most 

 decorative. Forms of very various colours occur : white, yellow, 

 brown, purple, and of a dark chocolate ; and in some of these 

 darker forms a bright yellow labellum adds very greatly to the 

 beauty of the flower. But I have never been able to satisfy 

 myself that I have seen more than one species. 



Nor has the variety of Orchid life in such a creek as I have 

 been imagining even yet been fully indicated. Here and there 

 a small tree, often a Calliandra, does not rise to the forest top, 

 but stretches its branches and branchlets, often very sparse- 

 leaved but thickly set from end to end with its feathery 

 close-nestling pink or white flowers, out into the vacant space 

 over the creek water. The smaller branches of such a tree, 

 often matted together with mosses and Liverworts, have perched 

 upon them, as it were, a number of very small Orchids, Plezcro- 

 thallis and Masdcvallia, with mosquito-like flowers, and 

 fan-shaped plants of two small species of Omithocephalus 

 (0. Ibis and 0. Cruegeri), and many others. 



I may pause for a moment to recommend anyone who cares 

 to see a really marvellous thing in the way of beauty of form 

 and beauty of adaptation to grow these or similar small species 

 of Omithocephalus, to examine the flowers carefully under the 

 microscope, and more especially to watch carefully the exquisite 

 contrivances which are revealed when the pollinia are released. 



Let us now wander in imagination higher up some creek, 

 some creek which has its source, not in the mere drainage of a 

 swamp, but from some of the low hills, the original coast line of 

 the country, which penetrate into the more lately deposited 

 alluvial tract, with which we have hitherto been chiefly dealing. 

 At the head of such a creek the bottom is often sandy, and the 

 water, no longer muddy but clear as crystal, is of a beautiful 

 and deep wine colour. (I often mentally praise the old Greeks 



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