ealers, in England or the
Continent, dead or living, who has not spent money--a large sum, too--in
searching for _C. l. vera_. Probably, also, not one has lost by the
speculation, though never a sign nor a hint, scarcely a rumour, of the
thing sought rewarded them. For all secured new orchids, new
bulbs--Eucharis in especial--Dipladenias, Bromeliaceae, Calladiums,
Marantas, Aristolochias, and what not. In this manner the lost orchid
has done immense service to botany and to mankind. One may say that the
hunt lasted seventy years, and led collectors to strike a path through
almost every province of Brazil--almost, for there are still vast
regions unexplored. A man might start, for example, at Para, and travel
to Bogota, two thousand miles or so, with a stretch of six hundred miles
on either hand which is untouched. It may well be asked what Mr.
Swainson was doing, if alive, while his discovery thus agitated the
world. Alive he was, in New Zealand, until the year 1855, but he offered
no assistance. It is scarcely to be doubted that he had none to give.
The orchids fell in his way by accident--possibly collected in distant
parts by some poor fellow who died at Rio. Swainson picked them up, and
used them to stow his lichens.

Not least extraordinary, however, in this extraordinary tale is the fact
that various bits of _C. l. vera_ turned up during this time. Lord Home
has a noble specimen at Bothwell Castle, which did not come from
Swainson's consignment. His gardener told the story five years ago. "I
am quite sure," he wrote, "that my nephew told me the small bit I had
from him"--forty years before--"was off a newly-imported plant, and I
understood it had been brought by one of Messrs. Horsfall's ships." Lord
Fitzwilliam seems to have got one in the same way, from another ship.
But the most astonishing case is recent. About seven years ago two
plants made their appearance in the Zoological Gardens at Regent's
Park--in the conservatory behind Mr. Bartlett's house. How they got
there is an eternal mystery. Mr. Bartlett sold them for a large sum; but
an equal sum offered him for any scrap of information showing how they
came into his hands he was sorrowfully obliged to refuse--or, rather,
found himself unable to earn. They certainly arrived in company with
some monkeys; but when, from what district of South America, the closest
search of his papers failed to show. In 1885, Dr. Regel, Director of
the Imperial Gardens at St. Pe