The woodcut represents, for purposes of comparison, two nearly allied _Odontoglossa_, viz., _O. pulchellum_ and _O. Egertonianum_; they both come from the same country (Guatemala) and closely resemble each other in habit--only that the pseudobulbs of the latter have much the sharper edges--but the flowers are very different. The spikes of _O. Egertonianum_ (2) are a sort of Orchid-imitation of the racemes of the "Lily of the Valley," though unfortunately they have no perfume, while those of _O. pulchellum_ (1) emit a delicious, almond-like odour, not very unlike that of _Gardenia radicans_; they are, moreover, very chaste and beautiful, and are freely produced during the winter months. Under these circumstances the species has long since become, what it well deserved to be, an established popular favourite. Yet on its introduction some five-and-thirty years ago--I had then just received the plant from my lamented friend Mr. G. U. Skinner--its first feeble attempts to flower left such an impression of its insignificance upon my mind, that I churlishly refused it a place among the magnates of its family in "The Orchidaceæ of Mexico and Guatemala" on which I was then engaged! But greater discrimination in the treatment of our plants--in other words the recognition of the system of "Cool-Orchid-growing"--has led to a more just appreciation of its merits. [Illustration] NOTES. [1] The mention of the illustrious traveller's name reminds me of the obligations under which he laid me when I first visited Berlin, in the spring of 1836; for, young as I was, he deigned to pour into my delighted ears all the stores of Orchid-lore collected during his memorable wanderings among the Andes of New Grenada and Peru. Here, he said, the greatest store of beauteous Orchids was to be found, and we are now beginning to realize the truth of his remark. [2] Cool Orchids from the interior of South America, have either to be carried across the Andes, where the intense cold of the passes is often fatal to them, or to be conveyed by a tedious voyage down the great rivers, where the heat is greater than their constitution--often delicate--can endure. In this way whole importations have been lost, including, I am sorry to say, one or two cargoes of the exquisite _Odontoglossum Warczewitzii_ (figured in Reichenbach's "Xenia") which still unhappily remains a desideratum.