When in India in 1907, at Darjeeling, I hired two men and two donkeys to go down into the valleys of Bhutan to collect orchids. They returned in about ten days with four large baskets full, chiefly denrobiums. Among them there was a good deal of rubbish, but also many good plants, which I sent home, and which have since flowered and done well. There are no plants more difficult to kill than orchids; but, on the other hand, there are no plants more difficult to grow and to flower. Their habits must be known and studied, and, above all, they must be provided with the exact temperature and degree of moisture they have been accustomed to. But the reward of successful cultivation is great and worth striving for. No flowers can be more lovely in form and in colour, and they have the great merit of lasting for days and even weeks in all the wealth of luxuriant beauty. They are the aristocracy of flowers. [Illustration: _Photo by Medrington._ William B. Forwood] CHAPTER XX. OBITER DICTA. Life viewed in retrospect down the vista of half a century of activity, presents many lessons which may be both interesting and instructive--lessons from one's own experience, lessons derived from watching the careers of others, of those who have made a brilliant success, of others who have made a disastrous failure, and of the many who have lived all their lives on the ragged edge between plenty and penury. It is also instructive to notice the conditions under which the great problem of life had to be worked out, as they vary to some extent with each decade. The world does not stand still, it will not mark time for our convenience; we have to go with the times, and the enigma of life is how to turn them to the best account. The outstanding features of the present day are the keenness of competition in every walk of life, and the rapidity with which events occur, creating a hurry which is prejudicial to the careful ordering of one's own life. Competition has always been very keen, and the cry has ever been for the return of those good old days when competition was less. If they ever existed, it was before my time. Everything, however, is comparative. With larger numbers of people there must be more competition, but there are also more opportunities, more employment, more people to feed, and more to clothe. But with the advance of education, particularly of technical knowledge, the competition has become more intense in the higher branches of industrial and intellectual activity; still, there is room, and ample room, on the top. The lower rungs of the ladder are well occupied, but the numbers thin off as we approach the top, and this must be more and more the case as education advances.