our winter damp is intolerable.
Mr. Godseff tells me that he has seen _C. spectabile_ growing like any
water-weed in the bogs of New Jersey, where it is frozen hard, roots and
all, for several months of the year; but very few survive the season in
this country, even if protected. Those fine specimens so common at our
spring shows are imported in the dry state. From the United States also
we get the charming _C. candidum_, _C. parviflorum_, _C. pubescens_, and
many more less important. Canada and Siberia furnish _C. guttatum_, _C.
macranthum_, and others. I saw in Russia, and brought home, a
magnificent species, tall and stately, bearing a great golden flower,
which is not known "in the trade;" but they all rotted gradually.
Therefore I do not recommend these fine outdoor varieties, which the
inexperienced are apt to think so easy. At the same cost others may be
bought, which, coming from the highlands of hot countries, are used to a
moderate damp in winter.

Foremost of these, perhaps the oldest of cool orchids in cultivation, is
_C. insigne_, from Nepal. Everyone knows its original type, which has
grown so common that I remarked a healthy pot at a window-garden
exhibition some years ago in Westminster. One may say that this, the
early and familiar form, has no value at present, so many fine varieties
have been introduced. A reader may form a notion of the difference when
I state that a small plant of exceptional merit sold for thirty guineas
a short time ago--it was _C. insigne_, but glorified. This ranks among
the fascinations of orchid culture. You may buy a lot of some common
kind, imported, at a price representing coppers for each individual, and
among them may appear, when they come to bloom, an eccentricity which
sells for a hundred pounds or more. The experienced collector has a
volume of such legends. There is another side to the question, truly,
but it does not personally interest the class which I address. To make a
choice among numberless stories of this sort, we may take the instance
of _C. Spicerianum_.

It turned up among a quantity of _Cypripedium insigne_ in the
greenhouse of Mrs. Spicer, a lady residing at Twickenham. Astonished at
the appearance of this swan among her ducks, she asked Mr. Veitch to
look at it. He was delighted to pay seventy guineas down for such a
prize. Cypripediums propagate easily, no more examples came into the
market, and for some years this lovely species was a treasure for du