SKETCHES OF WILD ORCHIDS IN GUIANA. 
49 
Strnia, 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 Galliandra , 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, Pleuro- 
thallis and Masdevallia, with mosquito-like flowers, and 
fan-shaped plants of two small species of Ornithocephalus 
(0. Ibis and 0. Cncegeri), 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 Ornithocepkalus, 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 
E 
