Orchids have been really popular about twenty-five years. They were well known in the last century, but they were the possession of the privileged few, and were regarded as a mere floral curiosity. One day, however, some sixty years or more ago, the late Duke of Devonshire chanced to come across an orchid from Demerara, which bore an extraordinary resemblance to a butterfly. His delight was immense, and he proceeded forthwith to cultivate the plant, of which a variety is shown in our illustration of the _Oncidium Kramerianum_. A little later he purchased a "Moth Orchid," for which he paid 100 guineas; and to the interest taken in these floral mimics by the ancestor of Lord Hartington are traceable the developments which have been so remarkable during the last decade or two. Almost the first thing that strikes the spectator at an orchid show for the first time, after he has recovered from a sort of shock at the overwhelming beauty of the display--a display out-rivalling the rainbow in its variety and blend of colour--is the quite ludicrous resemblance of many of the flowers to animals, birds, and insects. Bees, spiders, grasshoppers, flies, lizards, and toads are quite common forms of orchid mimicry. Our illustration of _Cycnoches Warscewiczii_ shows a swan, with a curious-looking tuft upon its breast. Another species is very like a dove as it may be seen hovering for an instant near the branch of a tree before alighting. One group has a flower in which a resemblance to the monkey is found; but the most ludicrous of mimetic vagaries is surely that of the species known popularly as the "Man Orchid." "Dressed like an acrobat in skin tunic of green, it swings as if gibbeted, in company with some fifty other little felons." But the flower is not content to run animate nature close in outward appearance; it evinces a disposition to rival man in the manufacture of various kinds of appliances. It takes a hint from the boot-maker, and produces the "Lady's Slipper"; it provides for the wants of a young family, and turns out a "Cradle"; it even resolves itself into a sort of swimming bath, in which the bee sometimes finds himself involuntarily immersed, and from which he escapes by means of a side-door arrangement. Well might Darwin say that the orchid family seemed to have been modelled in the wildest caprice. Proteus himself was incapable of assuming so many shapes. [Illustration: CYCNOCHES WARSCEWICZII.] [Illustration: ONCIDIUM KRAMERIANUM.]