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ORCHARDSON

1390

ORD

Hagpore in Rome, where, from 15 71 to 1594, l&asaoal performances of this class were first flttHE&og&d. The oratorio was produced in Kcsxie in 1600, the same year in which the first opera was given in Florence. The first development of the oratorio had the passion of Christ for its subject^ and the greatest passion music is the St. Matthew, written for service on Good Fridayy by Sebastian Bach in 1729. The next form was the epic? used by Htfndel in 15 grand oratorios, the greatest of w'Mch are Israel in Egypt and the Messiah, by Haydn in his Creation and by Mendelssohn in Elijah. The modern oratorio uses more of the dramatic element, and inclines to the form of a cantata, of which Liszt's St Elisabeth and Schumann's Paradise and the Peri are fine examples. See Standard Oratorios by Upton.

Or'chardson, William Quiller, R. A., a Scotch painter, was born in 1835, at Edinburgh, where he studied art. He is considered to belong to the first rank of genre painters, that is, a class of paintings whose subjects are taken from everyday life. His pictures, many of the later of which are fashionable interiors and portraits are very popular and exquisitely finished. Among the best known are The Challenge, Napoleon on the Bellerophon, The Bill of Sale, Hard Hit, After, The Salon of Madame Recamier, The Rift within the Lute, Her Mother's Voice and The Young Duke.

Orchids (dr'ktds'), species of a great mono-uotyledonous family, the Orchidacecz, con-

omcmD

taining over 6,000 species. Their greatest display is in the tropics, where many of them are brilliantly colored epiphytes. There ar@ many beautiful species, however, in the temperate regions, chiefly in bogs. The flowers are very much modified, always having a conspicuous spur, at the bottom of which nectar is secreted. Orchids are very highly

LADY-SLIPPER

specialized in reference to pollination by insects. Each kind of orchid has its own kind of insect, and all of the elaboration of the flower is connected with this fact. In greenhouses orchids are among the most prized of plants, on account of the showy colors and the strange forms of the flowers, the most conspicuous being the epiphytes from the tropical forests. Among the best known forms are the common lady-slippers or moccasin flowers (Cypripedium), in which the spur is repla^d by a conspicuous sac, the so-called slipper or moccasin. (See LADY'S SLIPPER.) Another of our beautiful native orchids is the white-fringed orchis, found in swamp and cranberry marsh in New Jersey and north and westward to Minnesota. The leaves are alternate, lanceolate; the flowers bloom in July, are milk-white, lower lip heavily fringed, grow in numbers on a short spike. The yellow-fringed orchis closely resembles the preceding but is taller, has bloom of a rich orange. The large purple-fringed orchis is a queenly flower, found in meadows and rich woods from Nova Scotia and New England to North Carolina and Michigan. The flowers, June to August, are of violet hue, large and fragrant, the lip often an inch and a half long, the cluster in dense racemes. In the evergreen woods of the north one may in July find the cool-looking green and white bloom of the great green orchis? flowers clustered loosely on a long spike? the two large leaves of the plant lying flat on the ground. See Watson: Orchids. Ord, Edward Otho Cresap, an American general, was born in Cumberland, Md., Oct,