April i, 1885.] THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



779 



instructions to transmit it to all planters on their different 

 eommissionersfaips. Amidst the splendour of this telegram, 

 Mr. Wood-Mason took his departure, leaving the planting 

 community as much at a loss with regard to a remedy, 

 as they were before, but stupified into silence, by the very 

 boldness of opinion, advanced by him as original, but which 

 old planters had known for years. In case our readers 

 may have forgotten the purport of his telegram, we may 

 state that it told how the eggs of the Tea Bug were deposited 

 in the tea shoot, and recommended plucking off every soft 

 shoot on a bush, so as to destroy the eggs of the bug. 

 Such a course may have seemed feasible to a man who 

 had not studied how the tea leaf is produced, and how 

 carefully a planter looks after his plucking to prevent 

 weakening his bushes by over plucking, not to speak of 

 stripping it of every soft shoot. No botanist would have 

 proposed such a course, though a botanist might have 

 advocated the total destruction of tea bushes and adajacent 

 jungle whenever the pest appeared, and suggested that 

 Government might bear part of the loss. Tins cure of 

 Mr. "Wood-Mason's would be worse than the disease: for 

 if it were persisted in there could be but one end to the 

 bush, and that would be its utter annihilation. The way 

 in which the tea bug laid its eggs in the young succulent 

 shoots was, or had been, known to very many old planters, 

 and if we mistake not Messrs. Stuart lirothers of Koomber 

 and Larsingah, who had, from bitter experience of its 

 ravages, given a good deal of attention to the subject of 

 the bug, could have enlightened Mr. Wood Mason on 

 many points which he claims as original. We know of 

 more than one planter, who, from information received 

 from the Messrs. Stuart Brothers, not only could successfully 

 point out where the eggs lay in the shoots, but had 

 hatched young bugs in bottles from the eggs. Mr. Wood- 

 Mason, too, we understand, gave it as his opinion that 

 the insect did not exist or attack any kind of jungle, 

 but simply preyed upon the tea. This, we are convinced, 

 could be easily controverted by what many of our old 

 planters have seen. Mr. Wood-Muson was sent up to the 

 tea districts, as we stated above, by Government, at the 

 instigation of the Calcutta agency houses, and with a 

 view to find out a remedy for what is more commonly 

 known in the tea districts as the hlic,ht. In this he has 

 signally failed. He has written two very interesting mono- 

 grams. Planters value monograms very highly, but they 

 would value a practical method of getting 'rid of these 

 pests more highly still. If any planter should turn to 

 Mr. Wood-Mason's book in the hope of fiuding any thing 

 that will be of the slightest value to him in his work he 

 will be disappointed. If any planter goes to the little book 

 in the hope that at last he may have dropped upon some- 

 thing that may help him to cure the '-blight" which has 

 cost him many a sleepless night, cost his shareholders 

 maunds upou maunds of tea, and made the difference 

 between a handsome profit and a small loss, he will light 

 on some such sentence as this— "The respiratory processes 

 of the egg shell so closely resemble the fine pubescence 

 which clothes the surface of the shoots, as to be quite 

 undistinguishable from it to the unaided eye ; and to eyes 

 unaccustomed to Zoological work, even with the aid of an 

 ordinary lens, so that it is no wonder the planters had 

 altogether failed to find the eggs of the pest after these 

 had left the bodies of the females." 



Many planters were quite well aware of the habits of 

 * ne insect in laying its eggs, aud we have named two, 

 and others could be named if necessary. The way in which 

 the insect lays its eggs does not seem to give any indication 

 how to get rid of it. The eggs are laid in the soft 

 succulent shoots of the bush and to leave portions of which 

 011 the bush is absolutely necessary to its existence, so 

 that some other method must be found out to destroy 

 the insects than the suicidal one recommended by Mr. 

 Wood-Mason. There is no doubt that a very large fortune 

 awaits any scientific man who will devote his time not 

 only to the study of the habits of tea pests, hut to a 

 practical method of preventing their ravages. We are fully 

 aware that a knowledge of the habits of the insects is 

 neoessary to draw any inference or offer any suggestion 

 as to a cure, but when the subject is taken up by a 

 scien'ific man one expects to learn something which he 

 d." n (l t known before, and disappointment is felt when 

 on practical result is forthcoming.— Planters' Gazette, 



ORCHIDS. 



[A paper read by Mr. D. Birt beforo tho Catcrham 

 Horticultural Society, December 12th. ] 



It would perhaps be not unfitting to begin the discus- 

 sion of our subject by giving an answer to the question, 

 "What is an Orchid ? " by showing, that is to say, in 

 what respects Orchids differ from other plants. Their 

 chief peculiarity consists by no means in the beauty of 

 their flowers — for many of these flowers would scarcely 

 be thought beautiful — but that which marks off the 

 Orchids from general plant life is the curious structure 

 anil wonderful contrivance which their flowers exhibit 

 and which they possess for the accomplishment of a 

 special purpose, which I will explain presently. It is 

 one of these special points of flower structure which has 

 given rise to the term "Orchid," but as I think we can 

 best turn our attention to the flowers of these inter- 

 esting plant! after wc have considered one or two other 

 aspects of our subject. 



A 'common idea about these plants is that they all 

 grow in very hot countries, and that they all need very 

 hot quarters when brought under cultivation. The fact 

 is, that though the forests of the torrid regions, and 

 particularly the South American forests, are very rich in 

 Orchids, yet some of those which bear the finest and 

 most interesting flowers are found in climates almost 

 temperAte. Orchids, indeed, are found in nearly all parts 

 of the world except the very coldest and most arid, aud 

 of the :i,000 species which have been described, thirty- 

 eight are found amongst the wild flowers of Great 

 Britain. 



Orchids have two very distinct modes of growth. A 

 large number (the tropical kinds, more especially) grow 

 on the boughs of trees. They appear in noway to injure 

 their big friends who thus hold them aloft, shade them 

 from the fierce sun, aud "rock them in their arms so 

 wild." Hence Orchids are not classed with parasitic 

 plants (such, for instance, as Mistletoe), which feed on 

 the juices of the trees they occupy, but are termed epiphytes, 

 which means a plant growing upon a plant. These 

 epiphytes, or tree Orchids, form one of the two divisions 

 of the Orchid family. 



The other division consists of the terrestrial Orchids, 

 as those are called which grow down upon the ground. 



I will take two or three examples of these groups, 

 first calling attention to the Oattleya. This is one of a 

 large section comprising many sorts differing less in the 

 character of their growth and the shape of their flowers 

 than in the colouring of th« latter, which is very various 

 in the different species. Though the mode in which it 

 is grown — viz., on the top of a clay pot, with a little 

 peat under it, is found to be the best artificial mode of 

 cultivation, it doubtless grew with far greater vigour high 

 up on its native tree in some Brazilian forest whence it 

 was brought. You must imagine it so growing ; in hot 

 sunshine by day modified by the overhanging leafage, at 

 night blown by the cool night winds from the Atlantic, 

 and anon during its growing season drenched by the 

 downpour of a tropical thunderstorm. The base of each 

 leaf (that upon which it grows) is much more than a 

 mere leafstalk. It is, in fact, a reservoir of moisture 

 upon which the leaf subsists during the long season of 

 drought to which the plant is exposed. But for this 

 reserve of moisture the plant would die in the hot 

 rainless part of the year, which continues for some 

 months. Due allowance has to be made for this when 

 the plant comes under cultivation, and hvnee when 

 CatHeyas go to rest after completing their growth for the 

 year we give them scarcely any water. Under this 

 treatment these pseudo-bulbs or reservoirs frequently 

 show signs of shrivelling by partial loss of their contents, 

 but when the growing season comes round again, aud 

 water is again given in more abundance, the bulbs get 

 plump again. 



We will next take the Odontoglossuin. a'so found on 

 the American Continent, and representative of the class 

 of earth Orchids which are found in great variety in 

 Central America. The particular species I have selected 

 is named O. Alexandras, because it was introduced to 

 England about the time that our future Queen Consort 

 first came to our shores as the Prince of Wales's bride. 

 This Orchid, though it is a native of Bogota, and, there- 



