The cells of plants focus light like eyes. A scientist in Europe has taken pictures with them. Cell-eyes may know love and hate. Without weariness, for measureless time, what have they not reflected? Poised upon the edge of tremendous heights, they survey chasms of transformation. They survey the circle of created things. Who knows what they have seen which the human eye may not record? There may be an amazing new botany awaiting us some day. It will not be bare mathematical computation. It will not drily number petals, stamens. In unthinkable distances of time, apparently dull, yet sleepless cell-eyes will be photographed. Upon these photographs there will be found the strangest, most astonishing moving-picture, the unfolding history of the world. The triumph, the tragedy, of cell-progress, throughout the measureless black night of time, will become possession of all. There we shall read the past. There we shall read the passions, adventures of the orchid, in its long climb upward, toward more powerfully sentient life. Thinking does not necessarily wear _one_ fashion of flesh. All things can not be seen from one view point. This is true of planes of life, which are an endless spiral, filling heights of years. There are planes seen only with the brain, when it brings to action high powers of thought-projection. Pan and the nymphs symbolized Greek belief in the life-spirit of trees. In pagan days the names given to the orchid signified life. They were names of lovely women: _Alba_, _Rosa_, _Aurea_. Within this nomenclature of the ancients, it may be a scientific fact lies hidden. Facts are felt dimly by many before they are stated broadly by one. The orchid expresses intensity. The modern world has loved it, because it is restless, perplexing, like the modern soul. The pagan world preferred calmer flowers. It was satisfied with the rose. The rose is an early Victorian. Plants are not different from people. There are plant-villages that lead a busy life. There are plant-colonies that hate the invader. They protect themselves against him. There are vagabond-plants that run away, impelled to wander. The orchid is an adventuress, reaching out greedily between planes of existence. It has become most superb in strength wherever there have been perished civilizations, wherever an unknown past has been prodigious.