With such a
guardian they seem to be happy, and to thrive, and to establish an
understanding, indicating to him their wants in many important matters
as plainly as though they could speak." And the laugh that followed this
statement was not derisive. He who glances at the endless tricks,
methods, and contrivances devised by one or other species to serve its
turn may well come to fancy that orchids are reasoning things.
At least, many keep the record of their history in form unmistakable.
Here is a Cattleya which I purchased last autumn, suspecting it to be
rare and valuable, though nameless; I paid rather less than one
shilling. The poor thing tells me that some cruel person bought it five
years ago--an imported piece, with two pseudo-bulbs. They still remain,
towering like columns of old-world glory above an area of shapeless
ruin. To speak in mere prose--though really the conceit is not
extravagant--these fine bulbs, grown in their native land, of course,
measure eight inches high by three-quarters of an inch diameter. In the
first season, that _malheureux_ reduced their progeny to a stature of
three and a half inches by the foot-rule; next season, to two inches;
the third, to an inch and a half. By this time the patient creature had
convinced itself that there was something radically wrong in the
circumstances attending its normal head, and tried a fresh departure
from the stock--a "back growth," as we call it, after the fashion I have
described.
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