OCR Text |
Show Orchids in Profusion All Over New Guinea Orchids grow by the cartload In all the bush country of New Guinea. Clearing with my boys a gang of native na-tive axmen I used to watch closely the process of felling of any old rugged tree, a It la on these tree that the best orchid are found, and ome of the boy were quite clever enough to strip off the plants and hide them until they could find a chance of going Into the settlement on steamer day, when they used to take the roots to the steamer, and sell them to travelers at ten shilling a kerosene tin. Almost nobody in Papua, save an occasional collector sent out by some scientific Institute, know one orchid from another; the flower are used only to decorate verandas and to plant about walks and avenues. An orchid house Is the commonest ot ornament on some small plantation, owned perhaps per-haps by a half-caste Malay or an 1m-pecunlon 1m-pecunlon trader, and many houses In the settlements have pergola covered with orchids. White orchids and pink, yellow orchids or-chids and brown, the butterfly orchid and the star-shaped these are the names given to blossoms that perhaps are worth hundreds of pounds apiece, and perhaps- not Nobody troubles, Beatrice Grimsbaw in the Saturday Evening Post |