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 hushes 
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 secunda, 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 
