festive occasions, and a considerable trade has been developed in flowers for such uses. Favorite kinds for this purpose are the 
Fig. 4.—Motive in Cut Orchids, mounted on Bamboo. Odontoglossums, with handsome white, starry flowers, and the Oncidium papilio, with its butterfly-shaped corolla.
The enormous sums that are often paid for orchids are decried as foolish, and the extravagance is sometimes compared with the craze that once raged about tulips. The two fashions are not to be compared; for there is something real and solid about orchids, which will always give them rank among the finest and most highly esteemed flowers; while tulips are not fine, and soon suffered a loss of the extravagant admiration that prevailed for them for a time. New varieties of the rose, although it is a very old flower, still bring higher prices than the rarest of orchids.—Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from La Nature.
