d back, until in a very few
weeks it has all the appearance of a newly-imported piece. The
explanation is curious. At some time, not distant, a quantity of _R.
coccinea_ must have found its way to the neighbourhood of Rio. There it
flourishes as a weed, with a vigour quite unparalleled in its native
soil. Unscrupulous persons take advantage of this extraordinary
accident. From a country so near and so readily accessible they can get
plants home, pot them up, and sell them, before the withering process
sets in. May this revelation confound such knavish tricks! The moral is
old--buy your orchids from one of the great dealers, if you do not care
to "establish" them yourself.

_R. coccinea_ is another of the climbing species, and it demands, even
more urgently than _V. teres_, to reach the top of the house, where
sunshine is fiercest, before blooming. Under the best conditions,
indeed, it is slow to produce its noble wreaths of flower--deep red,
crimson, and orange. Upon the other hand, the plant itself is
ornamental, and it grows very fast. The Duke of Devonshire has some at
Chatsworth which never fail to make a gorgeous show in their season; but
they stand twenty feet high, twisted round birch-trees, and they have
occupied their present quarters for half a century or near it. There is
but one more species in the genus, so far as the unlearned know, but
this, generally recognized as _Vanda Lowii_, as has been already
mentioned, ranks among the grand curiosities of botanic science. Like
some of the Catasetums and Cycnoches, it bears two distinct types of
flower on each spike, but the instance of _R. Lowii_ is even more
perplexing. In those other cases the differing forms represent male and
female sex, but the microscope has not yet discovered any sort of reason
for the like eccentricity of this Renanthera. Its proper inflorescence,
as one may put it, is greenish yellow, blotched with brown, three inches
in diameter, clothing a spike sometimes twelve feet long. The first two
flowers to open, however--those at the base--present a strong contrast
in all respects--smaller, of different shape, tawny yellow in colour,
dotted with crimson. It would be a pleasing task for ingenious youth
with a bent towards science to seek the utility of this arrangement.

Orchids are spreading fast over the world in these days, and we may
expect to hear of other instances where a species has taken root in
alien climes like _R. coccinea_ in Brazil