Volume 102 — ODONT.!

Oh, Flora, fair Goddess of Flowers, skies brighten, the gardens are glowing, And lo! 'tis the season of Flower Shows, when everything seems "All-a-blowing!" And what the dickens you've been up to with the dictionary, I'm dashed if there's any possibility of knowing. Talk about "Volapück." Why, it isn't a circumstance compared with the floral goddess's crack-jaw. I've been trying to read the account of a Flower Show to my wife. Now, at patter-songs I've a slick tongue and slack jaw. I can do "John Wellington Wells" pretty patly; but to read through a horticultural article Would give an alligator instantaneous tetanus; and of meaning the words seem to have no particle. I should like to be introduced, in its Bornean home, to the glorious plant called Cælo Dyana. But fancy a footman having to announce Madame SPATHOGLOTTIS KIMBALLIANA! Odont. Uro-Skinneri sounds like something medical and epidermic, but then we're informed that its sepals and petals Are "reticulated in tender brown and broad rosy-mauve," which immediately sends one "off the metals." The Masdevallias may be a respectable family, though I should not care to marry into it, But "the hybrid M. Mundyana representing M. Veitchii × M. Ignea" (though "a wonderfully glowing orange" by all accounts), sounds so exceedingly mixed and mongrel that I'd certainly eschew it. "A noble Catt: Gigas" sounds rather aristocratic: "Catt: Jacomb," I suppose, is a sort of a relative; But Od. Citrosmum, sounds awfully odd, and is not my notion of a reassuring appellative. And what are you to make of Odont. crisp. Sanderæ, which, whomsoever "Sanderæ" may be, I don't want to "crisp" him; "A sport of nature unequalled" they call him, and no doubt his name is, for I can neither clearly articulate, stutter or lisp him. I've not a doubt that, whoever he is, he is probably liked and considered by some a gem. Gyp. Chamberlainianum has a political sound, and has a strong savour of a floral Brummagem. And then comes "Odont. vex. Bleui splendidissimum," which sounds like an appeal for "Two Lovely Blue Eyes." But if it means something entirely different, I shall hear it without the smallest surprise. In fact, looking further, I find, it's "an artificial hybrid from Odont. vexillarium × Odont. Roezlii." That's a staggerer. But Dend. phalænopsis Schroderæ Dellense is a still bigger horticultural swaggerer. O. Coradenei! likewise O. Crispum! I only wish that your Godmother, Flora, Would insist upon shorter and more intelligible names for her modern offspring. By bright Aurora, I can't go on worshipping at your floral shrine if the ritual is polyglot gibberish, and what's more, I won't, Ma'am. In the word (queerly spelt) of which you seem very fond, I earnestly say, Flower Goddess, Odont. Ma'am!!!