It bears the name of M. Du
Chaillu, who found it--he has forgotten where, unhappily. I took that
famous traveller to St. Albans in the hope of quickening his
recollection, and I fear I bored him afterwards with categorical
inquiries. But all was vain. M. Du Chaillu can only recall that once on
a time, when just starting for Europe, it occurred to him to run into
the bush and strip the trees indiscriminately. Mr. Sander was prepared
to send a man expressly for this Angraecum. The exquisite _A.
Sanderianum_ is a native of the Comorro Islands. No flower could be
prettier than this, nor more deliciously scented--when scented it is! It
grows in a climate which travellers describe as Paradise, and, in truth,
it becomes such a scene. Those who behold young plants with graceful
garlands of snowy bloom twelve to twenty inches long are prone to fall
into raptures; but imagine it as a long-established specimen appears
just now at St Albans, with racemes drooping two and a half feet from
each new growth, clothed on either side with flowers like a double train
of white long-tailed butterflies hovering! _A. Scottianum_ comes from
Zanzibar, discovered, I believe, by Sir John Kirk; _A. caudatum_, from
Sierra Leone. This latter species is the nearest rival of _A.
sesquipedale_, showing "tails" ten inches long. Next in order for this
characteristic detail rank _A. Leonis_ and _Kotschyi_--the latter rarely
grown--with seven-inch "tails;" _Scottianum_ and _Ellisii_ with
six-inch; that is to say, they ought to show such dimensions
respectively.
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