About Orchids | Page 9

and if a certain pleasing
feature of the business be lost, all who love the flower and their
fellow-men alike will cheerfully submit.
The talk is of orchids mostly, as these gentlemen stroll along the tables,
lifting a root and scrutinizing it with practised glance that measures its
vital strength in a second. But nurserymen take advantage of the
gathering to show any curious or striking flower they chance to have at
the moment. Mr. Bull's representative goes round, showing to one and
another the contents of a little box--a lovely bloom of Aristolochia
elegans, figured in dark red on white ground like a sublime
cretonne--and a new variety of Impatiens; he distributes the latter
presently, and gentlemen adorn their coats with the pale crimson
flower.
Excitement does not often run so high as in the times, which most of
those present can recall, when orchids common now were treasured by
millionaires. Steam, and the commercial enterprise it fosters, have so
multiplied our stocks, that shillings--or pence, often enough--represent
the guineas of twenty years back. There are many here, scarcely yet
grey, who could describe the scene when Masdevallia Tovarensis first
covered the stages of an auction-room. Its dainty white flowers had
been known for several years. A resident in the German colony at
Tovar, New Granada, sent one plant to a friend at Manchester, by

whom it was divided. Each fragment brought a great sum, and the
purchasers repeated this operation as fast as their morsels grew. Thus a
conventional price was established--one guinea per leaf. Importers were
few in those days, and the number of Tovars in South America
bewildered them. At length Messrs. Sander got on the track, and
commissioned Mr. Arnold to solve the problem. Arnold was a man of
great energy and warm temper. Legend reports that he threw up the
undertaking once because a gun offered him was second-hand; his
prudence was vindicated afterwards by the misfortune of a _confrère_,
poor Berggren, whose second-hand gun, presented by a Belgian
employer, burst at a critical moment and crippled him for life. At the
very moment of starting, Arnold had trouble with the railway officials.
He was taking a quantity of Sphagnum moss in which to wrap the
precious things, and they refused to let him carry it by passenger train.
The station-master at Waterloo had never felt the atmosphere so warm,
they say. In brief, this was a man who stood no nonsense.
A young fellow-passenger showed much sympathy while the row went
on, and Arnold learned with pleasure that he also was bound for
Caraccas. This young man, whose name it is not worth while to cite,
presented himself as agent for a manufacturer of Birmingham goods.
There was no need for secrecy with a person of that sort. He questioned
Arnold about orchids with a blank but engaging ignorance of the
subject, and before the voyage was over he had learned all his friend's
hopes and projects. But the deception could not be maintained at
Caraccas. There Arnold discovered that the hardware agent was a
collector and grower of orchids sufficiently well known. He said
nothing, suffered his rival to start, overtook him at a village where the
man was taking supper, marched in, barred the door, sat down opposite,
put a revolver on the table, and invited him to draw. It should be a fair
fight, said Arnold, but one of the pair must die. So convinced was the
traitor of his earnestness--with good reason, too, as Arnold's
acquaintances declare--that he slipped under the table, and discussed
terms of abject surrender from that retreat. So, in due time, Messrs.
Sander received more than forty thousand plants of _Masdevallia
Tovarensis_--sent them direct to the auction-room--and drove down the
price in one month from a guinea a leaf to the fraction of a shilling.

Other great sales might be recalled, as that of Phaloenopsis Sanderiana
and Vanda Sanderiana, when a sum as yet unparalleled was taken in
the room; Cypripedium Spicerianum, _Cyp. Curtisii_, Loelia anceps
alba. Rarely now are we thrilled by sensations like these. But 1891
brought two of the old-fashioned sort, the reappearance of Cattleya
labiata autumnalis and the public sale of Dendrobium phaloenopsis
Schroderianum. The former event deserves a special article, "The Lost
Orchid;" but the latter also was most interesting. Messrs. Sander are the
heroes of both. _Dendrobium ph. Schroederianum_ was not quite a
novelty. The authorities of Kew obtained two plants from an island in
Australasia a good many years ago. They presented a piece to Mr. Lee
of Leatherhead, and another to Baron Schroeder; when Mr. Lee's grand
collection was dispersed, the Baron bought his plant also, for £35, and
thus possessed the only specimens in private hands. His name was
given to the species.
Under these conditions, the man