I do not try to paint his raptures. A few weeks later many thousand plants were on their way to Europe. But the point of the story is that Mr. Oversluys had seen and even admired this flower many a time on the upland savannahs in riding past. He was looking for orchids, however, and who could have expected to find an Oncidium buried among herbage in the open ground?
The ox demands a word. Such trained animals are not uncommon in Central America. The process of education is very cruel. By constant tapping, their horns are loosened when young, so that the tortured beast obeys the slightest pressure. Its movements in walking are thus directed, and when the horns grow firm again it continues to recognise a touch. But the degrees of intelligence in brutes are strikingly displayed here. Some forget the lesson in a twelvemonth. Most are uncertain. A very few, like Pablo's, understand so well what is required of them that direction is needless. In that case the hunter can walk backwards, keeping his body quite concealed. He is almost sure to kill, unless the fault be his own.
The back wall carries a broad sloping ledge of tufa, where little chips of Odontoglossum and the rest are planted out to grow until they become large enough to be potted--no long time, for they gather strength fast in niches of the porous stone. Along the top, however, are ranged flowering plants of Odontoglossum grande which make a blaze in their season--three to six blooms upon a spike, the smallest of them four inches across. Overhead is a long row of Laelia Jongheana--some three hundred of them here and elsewhere. It is a species with a history, and I venture to transcribe the account which I published in the _Pall Mall Gazette_, July 18, 1899.
'A SENSATION FOR THE ELECT.--The general public will hear without emotion that Laelia Jongheana has been rediscovered. The name is vaguely suggestive of orchids--things delightful in a show, or indeed elsewhere, when in bloom, but not exhilarating to read about. Therefore I call the news a sensation for the elect. At the present moment, I believe, only one plant of L. Jongheana is established in this country, among Baron Schröder's wonders. Though its history is lost this must be a lonely survivor of those which reached Europe in 1855--a generation and a half ago. It is not to be alleged that no civilised mortal has beheld the precious weed in its native forests since that date; but no one has mentioned the spectacle, and assuredly no one has troubled to gather plants. Registered long since among the "Lost Orchids," which should bring a little fortune to the discoverer, native botanists and dealers in all parts of South America have been looking out. And the collectors! For forty years past not one of the multitude has left the shores of Europe or the United States, bound for the Cattleya realm, without special instructions to watch and pray for L. Jongheana. More and more pressing grew the exhortations as years went by and prices mounted higher, until of late they subsided in despair. Yet the flower is almost conspicuous enough to be a landmark, and it does not hide in the tree-tops either, like so many.