The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents | Page 6

ornithologist, came back again from the interior;
though they could not tell the species of the orchid and had let it wither.
And it makes these things more interesting."
"It makes them disgusting. I should be afraid of some of the malaria
clinging to them. And just think, there has been a dead body lying
across that ugly thing! I never thought of that before. There! I declare I
cannot eat another mouthful of dinner."
"I will take them off the table if you like, and put them in the
window-seat. I can see them just as well there."
The next few days he was indeed singularly busy in his steamy little
hothouse, fussing about with charcoal, lumps of teak, moss, and all the

other mysteries of the orchid cultivator. He considered he was having a
wonderfully eventful time. In the evening he would talk about these
new orchids to his friends, and over and over again he reverted to his
expectation of something strange.
Several of the Vandas and the Dendrobium died under his care, but
presently the strange orchid began to show signs of life. He was
delighted and took his housekeeper right away from jam-making to see
it at once, directly he made the discovery.
"That is a bud," he said, "and presently there will be a lot of leaves
there, and those little things coming out here are aërial rootlets."
"They look to me like little white fingers poking out of the brown," said
his housekeeper. "I don't like them."
"Why not?"
"I don't know. They look like fingers trying to get at you. I can't help
my likes and dislikes."
"I don't know for certain, but I don't think there are any orchids I know
that have aërial rootlets quite like that. It may be my fancy, of course.
You see they are a little flattened at the ends."
"I don't like 'em," said his housekeeper, suddenly shivering and turning
away. "I know it's very silly of me--and I'm very sorry, particularly as
you like the thing so much. But I can't help thinking of that corpse."
"But it may not be that particular plant. That was merely a guess of
mine."
His housekeeper shrugged her shoulders. "Anyhow I don't like it," she
said.
Wedderburn felt a little hurt at her dislike to the plant. But that did not
prevent his talking to her about orchids generally, and this orchid in
particular, whenever he felt inclined.

"There are such queer things about orchids," he said one day; "such
possibilities of surprises. You know, Darwin studied their fertilisation,
and showed that the whole structure of an ordinary orchid-flower was
contrived in order that moths might carry the pollen from plant to plant.
Well, it seems that there are lots of orchids known the flower of which
cannot possibly be used for fertilisation in that way. Some of the
Cypripediums, for instance; there are no insects known that can
possibly fertilise them, and some of them have never be found with
seed."
"But how do they form new plants?"
"By runners and tubers, and that kind of outgrowth. That is easily
explained. The puzzle is, what are the flowers for?
"Very likely," he added, "my orchid may be something extraordinary in
that way. If so I shall study it. I have often thought of making
researches as Darwin did. But hitherto I have not found the time, or
something else has happened to prevent it. The leaves are beginning to
unfold now. I do wish you would come and see them!"
But she said that the orchid-house was so hot it gave her the headache.
She had seen the plant once again, and the aërial rootlets, which were
now some of them more than a foot long, had unfortunately reminded
her of tentacles reaching out after something; and they got into her
dreams, growing after her with incredible rapidity. So that she had
settled to her entire satisfaction that she would not see that plant again,
and Wedderburn had to admire its leaves alone. They were of the
ordinary broad form, and a deep glossy green, with splashes and dots of
deep red towards the base. He knew of no other leaves quite like them.
The plant was placed on a low bench near the thermometer, and close
by was a simple arrangement by which a tap dripped on the hot-water
pipes and kept the air steamy. And he spent his afternoons now with
some regularity meditating on the approaching flowering of this strange
plant.
And at last the great thing happened. Directly he entered the little glass
house he knew that the spike had burst out, although his great

Palaeonophis Lowii hid the corner where his new darling stood. There
was a new odour in the air, a rich,