Disa grandiflora.—We received a wonderfully fine spike of this superb Orchid from Mr. Thomas Speed, the Duke of Devonshire’s gardener, at Chatsworth. The spike was two feet six inches in length from the pot, and bore twelve flowers of large size and fine colour—a bright scarlet and crimson, the lip veined with pink, which gives a nice contrast. It is a most charming cool-house Orchid that every one may grow who has an ordinary greenhouse. Mr. Speed is a most successful cultivator of this fine plant. We saw the first small plant he had to begin with some years ago, and this plant has gone on improving, and many offshoots have been taken from it which have also made fine specimens. The _Disa_ really seems to be no trouble to cultivate. The way in which Mr. Speed treats it is to grow it in a common greenhouse, where it gets plenty of fresh air and light, and here it requires nothing but plenty of water in the growing season. It is grown in sphagnum moss and rough fibrous peat and loam. There is no doubt that this plant does not get shifted from the place where it was found to do well. This is a great secret in plant culture. When a plant is found doing well, let it remain where it is, unless on trial another place is found to be equally suitable. Few people grow this _Disa_ well. The reason is, that they keep it in too warm a house, and coddle it too much. If they would follow Mr. Speed’s plan, there is no doubt they would succeed, if the plants are kept free from insects, and provided with sweet material about their roots.—B. S. W. [Illustration: PL. 108. CATTLEYA TRIANÆ FORMOSA.] CATTLEYA TRIANÆ FORMOSA. [Plate 108.] Native of Colombia. Epiphytal. _Stems_ oblong, club-shaped, furrowed, the lower parts enveloped in whitish membranaceous sheaths. _Leaves_ solitary, coriaceous, ligulate-oblong, obtuse, emarginate, deep green. _Scape_ two to three-flowered, proceeding from a terminal oblong compressed bract or sheath. _Flowers_ large, six inches in depth and seven inches in breadth, richly coloured; _sepals_ lanceolate, acute, about three-fourths of an inch broad, blush or very dilute rosy-purple; _petals_ much broader—two and a half inches, having the margins much undulated, of the same blush or pallid purple hue as the sepals; _lip_ well displayed, convolute at the base so as to enclose the column, and of a pallid purplish colour, the apical portion roundish, emarginate, and expanded, nearly two and a half inches across, the margin including the portion surrounding the throat, very much undulated so as to form a crenate-lobate frill, the surface for about two-thirds of the front of a deep rich magenta-purple, the disk and throat orange-yellow, the upper edge paler, and the magenta tint passing backwards in streaks over the disk. Cattleya Trianæ formosa, _Williams MS_.