This plant, we repeat, is of easy cultivation and blooms very freely, when grown in a mixture of rough fibrous peat and sphagnum moss, with good drainage. Our experience points to the coolest end of the East India house as the best position in which to grow it; but we have also found it to do well in the Cattleya house. It is necessary to bear in mind that the plant must be shaded from the burning sun, for it has thin leaves which are easily affected by the sun's rays; all the light possible should however be given. It will do well either in a pot or basket, and should not receive too much moisture at the roots, as Miltonias frequently suffer if too much water is given them. The soil must be kept freely moistened during the growing season, the supply of water being decreased when the season of rest approaches.
Odontoglossum grande.--C. Walker, Esq., Brettargh Holt, Westmoreland, sends us a grand spike of a fine variety of this, the king of Odontoglots. The spike bore six of its enormous flowers, and was much the finest we remember to have seen. Our artist has made a sketch of this spike, and we hope to publish it at some future time--H. W.
[Illustration: PL. 73. VANDA HOOKERIANA.]
VANDA HOOKERIANA. [Plate 73.] _Native of Borneo._
Epiphytal. _Stems_ elongate, rigid, terete, pale green, producing aërial roots from the joints, resembling in habit and character those of its near ally, _Vanda teres_. _Leaves_ erect, terete, tapered to a subulate mucronate point, channelled on the upper side, two and a half to three inches long, of a pale green colour. _Peduncles_ from near the top of the stem, opposite, and longer than the leaves, erect, bearing a two to five-flowered raceme (two-flowered in the examples bloomed in this country). _Flowers_ large, two and a half inches in diameter, and extremely beautiful, white, heavily striped and venosely dotted with deep rich magenta; _dorsal sepal_ obovate, cuneate, wavy, projected forwards, white, tinted with rose; the _lateral sepals_ similar in form, but larger, apiculate, white; _petals_ spathulate oblong, obtuse, undulately-crisped, standing right and left above the column and lip, white, spotted with magenta; _lip_ with a pair of large triangular entire auricles standing erect, one on each side the column, of a deep purple colour, mottled with a paler hue, the front portion expanding from a cuneate base into a very broad transverse trifid limb, two inches broad, which is concave, the lower edge being projected forwards, the lateral lobes oblong obtuse, the central one shorter, bluntly ovate, crenate, undulate, white, the disk marked longitudinally with bold rich magenta-purple lines, from which diverge in the direction of the lateral lobes several parallel stripes of a similar colour, the front part of these lobes, as well as the front lobe itself, marked with dots of rich magenta-purple ranged in lines. _Spur_ small, acute, with two blunt calli in front of its mouth. _Column_ hairy below, white, tipped with purple.