SUMMARY. 381 
predilections of the few, But the revolution in the cultivation of these 
plants which is now rapidly making its way, has altered materially 
Mr. Weir may send home. We now know that the proper place in which 
to grow them is a moderately cool moist house. "They are no longer to be 
thrust into stoves whose stifling breath was scarcely less baleful to them 
than are to us the fevered blasts of the ** white man's grave." А lady or 
а gentleman need no longer be a salamander to enjoy the beauty or the 
fragrance of an orchid,* and the impulse which has been already given to 
their cultivation by a knowledge of this fact is doubtless only at its com- 
mencement. And, now that we admit and recognise it, our chief sur- 
prise is, that we should have adhered to tho old system for so long. It 
was not for want of being told of the right course. In an interesting paper 
on Epidendrum vitellinum, which appears in this number, Mr. Bateman 
draws attention to a passage in Dr. Lindley's Sertum orchidaceum, where 
the Doctor long ago indicated the cool treatment as proper for that orchid, 
and in 1846, in a paper which he then published, entitled, “ Orchidacew я 
Lindeniane ; or Notes upon a Collection of Orchids found in Colombia 
and Ouba, by Mr. J. Linden,” he pointed it plainly out for all the orchids 
of the country to which Mr. Weir has now gone. He there said— 
Tt is түр that the Columbian species have no affection for а high temperature, 
and that many prefera low one, Мо fewer ал 13 occur et deli 10,000 and 11,000 
May 
ture of the zone between 5000 and 6000 feet, ihag the largest portion. exists, is 
only that of Paris in August, according to the same authority,’ 
Nay more, one species of Epidendrum (E. frigidum) was found by Mr. 
Linden in that country at from 12,000 to 13,000 feet high, where the mean 
temperature of the year is about 40^— where trees are wanting, pastures 
only found, and where it occasionally snows. Of this, Dr. Lindley 
ays :— 
“This would be incredible upon worse testimony than Mr. Linden’s if we did not 
or Jameson (of Quito) that one Oncidium (nubigenum) is found in 
a = the ет of 14,000 repeat =f rarely cms е it. Mr. Linden tells us that his 
ich ape at only a eternal puce covered all I 
fi includ a varnish whi ch i этери нелын intended аз its safeguar 
remarkable that ^g the E idendrums, with one exception, occur above pono feet, xd 
that they form a continued chain of species up to the ground of Ё, 
And d less remarkable is his statement — " $e. the hot pads опа 
level with the sea, orchids do not seem able to e 
And yet we have gone on for nearly ml cum since these sugges- 
tions were given, treating orchids as if everything had been quite the 
reverse. 
It is to be hoped that many of the Fellows will avail themselves of 
the opportunity of obtaining the plants which Mr. Weir may send home, 
to give orchid-growing in this country a fair trial on the rational system. 
For instructions as to how that is to be done we refer them to Mr. Bate- 
man’s paper, at page 349, 
course we ‘do not mean that there are no orchids for which the old stove 
* Of co 
treatment is suited ; we only say that А is unsuited for a We pror of them, 
and that among those for which it is ris egal uited, are orchids as Mr. 
Weir may be expected to send hom dus 
