The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents

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Герберт Уэллс. The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents

THE STOLEN BACILLUS

THE FLOWERING OF THE STRANGE ORCHID

IN THE AVU OBSERVATORY

THE TRIUMPHS OF A TAXIDERMIST

A DEAL IN OSTRICHES

THROUGH A WINDOW

THE TEMPTATION OF HARRINGAY

THE FLYING MAN

THE DIAMOND MAKER

AEPYORNIS ISLAND

THE REMARKABLE CASE OF DAVIDSON'S EYES

THE LORD OF THE DYNAMOS

THE HAMMERPOND PARK BURGLARY

A MOTH – GENUS NOVO

THE TREASURE IN THE FOREST

Отрывок из книги

The buying of orchids always has in it a certain speculative flavour. You have before you the brown shrivelled lump of tissue, and for the rest you must trust your judgment, or the auctioneer, or your good-luck, as your taste may incline. The plant may be moribund or dead, or it may be just a respectable purchase, fair value for your money, or perhaps – for the thing has happened again and again – there slowly unfolds before the delighted eyes of the happy purchaser, day after day, some new variety, some novel richness, a strange twist of the labellum, or some subtler colouration or unexpected mimicry. Pride, beauty, and profit blossom together on one delicate green spike, and, it may be, even immortality. For the new miracle of Nature may stand in need of a new specific name, and what so convenient as that of its discoverer? "Johnsmithia"! There have been worse names.

It was perhaps the hope of some such happy discovery that made Winter-Wedderburn such a frequent attendant at these sales – that hope, and also, maybe, the fact that he had nothing else of the slightest interest to do in the world. He was a shy, lonely, rather ineffectual man, provided with just enough income to keep off the spur of necessity, and not enough nervous energy to make him seek any exacting employments. He might have collected stamps or coins, or translated Horace, or bound books, or invented new species of diatoms. But, as it happened, he grew orchids, and had one ambitious little hothouse.

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"They look to me like little white fingers poking out of the brown," said his housekeeper. "I don't like them."

"Why not?"

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