228 VILLA GAKUENING pakt ii 



must be abundant and constant. The floor, the })aths and stages, 

 must be frequently deluged, and the syiinge must be used freely 

 at least twice a day in fine weather to supply the needs of the 

 plants which hail from the higher mountain ranges of Peru. 

 Shade, too, in spring and summer will be necessary to screen the 

 plants from the drying influence of briglit sunshine. A low 

 temperature highly charged with moisture brings robust growth, 

 which consolidates as it advances, and flowers abundantly without 

 that starving, ripening period which seems so necessary in the 

 case of the East India and other species from a dry climate. To 

 be successful in the cultivation of any class of jilants — indeed I 

 might go farther and say any individual jilant — one requires to 

 know something of the conditions under which the i)lants flourish 

 in their native homes. AVhen a plant is found in a wild condition 

 in any particidar situation, we may conclude that through a long 

 series of generations the work of fitting the one to the other has 

 been going on, and that it has survived and flourished simply 

 becaiLse it had the power of accommodating itself to its circum- 

 stances. But if that plant is taken from the home where it has 

 wrought out a place for itself, and exposed to a new and difterent 

 set of conditions, the probabilities arc that it will perish ; hence 

 the need of studying carefully the conditions luider which plants 

 have been growing before we receive them — not that those con- 

 ditions can be exactly imitated in all cases, but they should guide 

 us, and form a base or platform on which we may work. 



The Kind of Okchid-House suitable for a beginner would be 

 a low span-roofed structm*e partly sunk in the ground ; it may 

 be with a path down the middle and a bed or stage on each side. 

 As the collection increases, and the first plants develop into large 

 handsome specimens, a larger house will be required— that is, wide 

 and roomy, though not too lofty for this class of Orchids. There 

 are two great divisions of Orchids — one is called terrestrial — which 

 are usually gTOwn in pots ; and the other, Avhich are epiphytal, 

 are fastened to blocks of wood and suspended, or else planted in 

 baskets where the roots can revel among Sphagnum, broken 

 crocks, charcoal, and chips of stone. 



Terrestkial Orchids must have plenty of moisture, but there 

 must on no account be any stagnation. The pots specially made 

 for Orchids have plenty of openings for the escape of water, and 

 are in addition half filled with broken crocks or bricks for drainage. 

 On this, for the plant to grow in, will come rough fibry peat, 

 specially selected, and Sphagnum — two i)arts of the former to one 

 of the latter, varying the proportions in the case of certain species 

 when necessary, as it will be occasionally. Charcoal in lumps 



