58 
THE FLORIST S JOURNAL. 
ON STANHOPEA. 
WITH AN ENGRAVING OF S. TIGRINA. 
This Tiger-marked Stanhopea is truly a most extraordinary 
member of a most astonishing class of plants. Orchidaceous 
plants generally, when viewed for the first time, present to the 
beholder a complete vegetable enigma, which it is impossible to 
solve by attempting a comparison with any other form in the 
same natural kingdom : the result of the most strange freaks of 
the wildest fancy would fall far short of these prodigies of 
nature, these vegetating vagaries, and yet how singularly beau¬ 
tiful is the arrangement of their floral parts ! how admirably 
suited the organic conformation of the plant itself to the station 
assigned for its natural occupation, ever varying throughout the 
many genera, as it were to meet the exigences of habitat. Or- 
chideae seem to the observant admirer to be the last, greatest, 
and most gorgeous embellishment applied by the generous 
bounty of an Almighty hand to an already perfect work. 
It may perhaps be interesting, as well as useful, even in a 
practical sense, to point out what appears to be the peculiar adapt¬ 
ation of these plants to the situations in which they are found, 
as well as the seeming requirement of them in such situations. 
Chemists tell us that, for the support of animal life, a large pro¬ 
portion of oxygen, derived from the surrounding atmosphere, is 
consumed, and without the due supply of which none could 
exist, while for vegetable life, its opposite, or carbon, is required; 
these are the chief constituents of the two great divisions of 
creation, which, if reversed in the application, would prove alike 
fatal to both; each of them are present in common air, but, by 
the intervention of plants, the injurious increase of carbon is 
prevented, by the consumption of it for their own purposes, and 
in its assimilation they separate and emit the oxygen, so neces¬ 
sary to animal constitution. Exotic Orchidaceas are found only 
where moisture is prevalent, — usually in the form of floating 
aqueous matter; or in other words, a warm, humid atmosphere is 
necessary to their existence : now it is in situations such as these 
that carbon abounds, consequent on the presence of so much 
water, or rather on the very rapid decomposition which follows 
the extinction of life, and it is from this cause that the tropics 
