and fascinating
species, difficult to grow and still more difficult to flower. The sepals
and petals are very narrow, with edges like a saw, greenish brown,
widening out suddenly at the tip, which is yellow. The lip is
extraordinary in all respects. It shows a fine broad disc of dusky purple,
with a darker bar across the middle; and below this, sharply divided as if
by a stroke of the brush, two smaller discs pure white. Upon the whole to
be wondered at rather than admired, but more interesting on that account.

[Illustration: ODONTOGLOSSUM x HARRYANO-CRISPUM.]

STORY OF ONCIDIUM SPLENDIDUM

We all know that to make a thing conspicuous above measure is the most
effective way of baffling those who seek it. Wendell Holmes has expounded
the natural law of this phenomenon, and Edgar Poe exemplified it in a
famous story. I am about to give an instance from the life, as striking as
his fiction.

Oncidium splendidum is one of the stateliest orchids we have, and one of
the showiest. Its leaves are very large, fleshy and rigid, and the tall
flower spike bears a number of pale yellow blooms striped with brown, each
three inches across. There is no exaggeration in saving that they would
catch the most careless eye as far off as one could see them.

At an uncertain date in the fifties a merchant captain--whose name and
that of his ship have never been recovered--brought half a dozen specimens
to St. Lazare and gave them to his owner, M. Herman. This gentleman sold
the lot to MM. Thibaud and Ketteler, orchid-dealers of Sceaux. They were
tempted to divide plants so striking and so new; thus a number of small
and weakly pieces were distributed about Europe at a prodigious price. We
have the record of the sale of one at Stevens' Auction Rooms in 1870; it
could show but a single leaf, yet somebody paid thirty guineas for the
morsel. So ruthlessly were the plants cut up. Even orchids, tenacious of
life as they are, will not stand this treatment. In very few years more
Oncidium splendidum had vanished.

No one knew where it came from--with a strange carelessness MM. Thibaud
and Ketteler had not inquired. M. Herman was dead, and he left no record
of the circumstances. The captain could not be traced. Had the name of his
ship been preserved, it might have furnished a hint, since the port of
sailing would be registered in the Custom House. More than one
enterprising dealer made inquiries, but it was too late to recover the
tr