TRE ORCHIS 
187 
to chalky hills^ to see them exposed for sale, and to hear 
in early morning the cry of invitation to the purchaser 
sounded by the countryman, who has risen with the dawn 
to procure them, and brought them some miles for the 
inspection of the curious, before the towns-people have 
awaked from their slumbers, or have yet bethought them 
that “ truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is 
for the eyes to behold the sun.’’ 
The basket containing these floral curiosities is some- 
times half-filled with bluebells, sweet woodruff, and other 
wild-flowers, besides the plants which are familiarly termed 
man-orchis, butterfly-orchis, lizard and spider orchis, and 
all the many richly-coloured orchises with which the mea- 
dows and woods abound. And if none of these flowers 
can yield us the powerful odours of those which are trans- 
planted from afar, yet is their scent so redolent of the 
country, and so fresh and rural are their looks, that they 
to whom the wide extent of the unwalled meadow, or the 
steep ascent of the wooded hill, or the long and free 
meandering of the stream, or the glen whose loneliness is 
not interrupted even by a cottage, is dearer and lovelier 
than even the well-enclosed and nurtured garden-ground, 
are apt, upon seeing these flowers, to draw comparisons by 
no means favourable to the tulips, and carnations, and 
picotees. Many true lovers of the country can say with 
Mrs. Howitt, 
And hyacinth-like orchises 
Are very dear to me.” 
The common orchises of our woods are, as Mrs. Howitt 
describes them, something like hyacinths in their general 
appearance; as the flowers grow down the stem, in the 
same way as the bluebell, but their leaves are much 
broader, and they are of pinkish lilac-colour. The ob- 
server of the orchis plants would not, in several instances, 
detect their resemblance to the objects from which they 
are designated, as it is often very slight ; and that remark- 
able similarity which might bid us pause in our progress 
to seize the insect from the flower, and wonder it did not 
withdraw from the approaching hand, is, among our native 
species, almost peculiar to the bee and fly-orchis. 
