_Myersiana._--A large form. Sepals dusky, tinged with crimson at the edges. Petals softly crimson. Very long tube. The crimson lip has a pale margin, and a pale blotch in the front.
_Cleopatra._--One of the very best. Like that above in petal and sepal, but paler. The broad tube, however, is snow-white, saving a touch of magenta-crimson, bright as a ruby, at the tip of the lobes. And the lip, finely frilled, is all magenta-crimson, with not a mark upon it from throat to edge.
_Wolstenholmae._--White, the sepals tinted with purple. Petals broad, with a purple outline. Lip narrow and long, of a colour unique, which may be described as crimson-purple. In the throat are two curious white bars; between them run arching purple lines close set, which, on the outer side of the bars, extend to the edge of the lip. A very remarkable flower.
_Eximia._--Also very remarkable--not to say uncanny. The narrow sepals and petals, almost white, have a mottling of rosy mauve along the edges, which looks unwholesome, as if caused by disease. But the long paddle-shaped lip, crimson, changing to purple as it expands, is very fine. It has two pale yellow 'eyes' elongated in an extraordinary manner.
_Lord Roberts._--Very handsome and peculiar. The colour of the sepals, strongly folded back, is warm grey, tinged and faintly lined with crimson; this tinge is much more pronounced in the petals. The large tubular lip, finely opened, is uniform crimson-magenta, not so dark as usual.
[Illustration: LÆLIO-CATTLEYA × ELEGANS VAR. CYANTHUS.]
So soon as I began to take interest in orchids I was struck with the number of odd facts and incidents in that field of botany. One gains but a glimpse of them, as a rule, in some record of travel or some scientific treatise; and at an early date it occurred to me that if the stories to which these fragments belong could be recovered, they would prove to be not only curious and interesting but amusing--sometimes terrible. I began to collect, therefore, and in the pages following I offer some of the results.
It is right to begin with a legend of Roezl, if only because his name will often recur; but also he was incomparably the greatest of those able and energetic men who have roamed the savage world in search of new plants for our study and enjoyment. Almost any other mortal who had gone through adventures and experiences such as his in our time would have made a book and a sensation; but the great collector never published anything, I believe, beyond a statement of scientific facts from time to time. This is not the place to deal with his career; I am only telling stories. But it is not to be dismissed without a word.