340 Transactions. — Botany. 



perfuming their chocolate when the Spaniards discovered this 

 part of America. Chocolate was brought from Mexico into 

 Europe in 1520, but it appears that vanilla was brought to the 

 Continent as a perfume about the year 1510, at the same 

 time as indigo, cochineal, and cacao itself — that is to say, ten 

 years before the arrival of tobacco. ... I find that the 

 Vanilla planifolia is as connnon in the gardens of the British 

 Islands as in those of the Continent ; but the complaint there 

 generally is that it very rarely flowers. . . . The vanilla- 

 plant in order to flower should be at least five or six years old. 

 The older and larger it is, and the more branches it has, the 

 better and more abundantly it will flower. . . . The 

 culture consists in twining the long branches, cutting, and 

 burning them at their extremity with a hot iron ; everything 

 that contributes to stop the sap serves to bring it into a 

 flowering state. . . . The flower of vanilla has this 

 peculiarity : that the retinaculum is highly developed, so that 

 this organ forms a curtain suspended before and above the 

 stigmatic surface, thus separating it completely from the 

 anther, which in its turn incloses in two cavities, naturally 

 shut, the pulverulent masses of pollen. From this structure 

 it results that all approximation of the sexes in this orchideous 

 plant is naturally impossible. It is thus necessary either to 

 raise the velavien or to cut it when the plant is to be fecun- 

 dated, and to place in direct contact the pollen and the stig- 

 matic surface. . . . The direct results of this memoir, 

 therefore, go to prove that in all the intertropical colonies 

 vanilla might be cultivated, and a great abundance of fruit 

 obtained, by the process of artificial fecundation. ... It 

 is a subject wdiich well deserves attention in a commercial 

 point of view, and is, moreover, a proof of the importance of 

 science in improving every branch of industry." 



I have gone to some length in these extracts, because (as I 

 shall be able to show you) much of what Professor Morren 

 has so clearly stated, and almost foretold, has already come 

 to pass. 



Not very long ago some 5cwt. or 6cwt. was the total of 

 vanilla imported into England from Mexico. At present the 

 United States alone take about 136,0001b. from Mexico, and a 

 proportionate amount from other sources. The Mexican form, 

 we are told, still holds its own in the market, but several other 

 varieties are now cultivated. Numerous other regions have of 

 late years competed with Mexico for the custom of the vanilla 

 buyer. The latest of these is our colony of Fiji, from which 

 some choice samples have been sent to England. Java now 

 harvests enough for the Dutch consumption, none of it being 

 offered to the outside world; and Bourbon, from which in 

 1849 only 71b. or 81b. were exported, has now 3,000 acres 



