ORCHARDSON 



ORCHIDS 



625 



grown carrot, leaving nothing with a mouth for 

 Setter feeding reasonably near the surface. Little 

 improvement must be looked for during the first 

 season, but even then there should be symptoms of 

 increasing vigour, and in the second year the tree 

 should l>e making healthy growth again. 



Those that are of inferior kind, but have kindly 

 wood for grafting, should be headed back or 

 shortened home, with the dry and ragged wood 

 removed. Then in the spring let fair stout scions 

 of the better sort be inserted, chosen from strong 

 growers, such as impart their own vigour to the 

 stock ; for it is vain to work a feeble kind upon a 

 long established tree. The result will sometimes 

 be a great success and sometimes downright 

 failure, according to the harmony of stock and 

 graft, upon which point the most experienced 

 gardener as yet knows very little. 



Many old trees, as before suggested, will be fit 

 for nothing but firewood. These should be grubbed 

 up at once, not with a feeble hand, but following 

 every root as if you hated it. Then let a large 

 space be excavated and filled in with abundant 

 fresh soil trodden at every layer, and upon this 

 young standards of vigorous kind must be planted, 

 as shallow as may be, and banked up and staked. 

 None but the strongest and most rapid growers 

 can hope to make good these gaps among the 

 elders, and even so they will be long about it. 

 The virtue of patience must be highly cultivated 

 by the owner of an ancient orchard. Even for 

 renewal of an old plantation little can be said as 

 to choice of sorts without thorough knowledge of 

 locality. Many apples that become a picture in 

 Kent or Surrey or Devonshire are plain little dowdies 

 in Yorkshire, and unsightly scrubs in Scotland ; 

 while others that are comely and good in the north 

 are vapid in the southern counties. Again, few or 

 none of the American kinds, so handsome and fine 

 when imported, can be grown to perfection in Great 

 Itrit.iin. The conferences of the Royal Horticul- 

 tural Society have afforded most valuable hints 

 upon this subject, and their report should be 

 studied with care. Much may also be learned 

 from recent treatises by pomologists, such as Dr 

 Hogg's Fruit Manual; John Scott s Orchardist; the 

 works of the late Thomas Rivers, and the fruit- 

 lists of the present T. F. Rivera ; the Growth of 

 Fruit for Profit, by George Bunyard of Maidstone; 

 and a concise work on the same subject by Mr 

 Wright of the Horticultural Journal. See APPLE. 



Orrhardson, WILLIAM QUILLKR, a genre- 

 painti-r, who is considered to bear the palm in this 

 branch of art, surpassing all other English physiog- 

 nomists in accuracy, expression, and dexterous 

 execution. He was born in 1833 in Edinburgh, 

 where subsequently he studied under Scott Lander 

 at the Trustees' Academy; he became A.R.A. in 

 1868, R.A. in 1877, and received a Medal of 

 Honour at the Exposition Uninerselle, 1878. Best 

 known among his exquisite and highly-popular 

 pictures are 'The Challenge' (1803), 'The Duke's 

 Antechamber' (1869), 'Casus Belli' (1870), 'The 

 Protector' (1871), 'The Bill of Sale' (1875), 

 'The Queen of the Swords' (1877), 'A Social 

 Eddy' (1878), 'Hard Hit' (1879), 'On Imard 

 H.M.S. Betlerttphon, July 23, 1815 '(1880; bought 

 by the Chantrey Bequest), ' Mariage de Con- 

 venance' (1884), 'After' (1886), 'The Salon of 

 Madame Recamier' (1885), 'The First Cloud" 

 (1887), and 'The Young Duke' (1889). On the 

 artist (who is D.C.L. of Oxford), see the Portfolio 

 fur February 1895 by W. Armstrong. 



Orrlii'Stra, the part of the Greek theatre where 



the clioniM danced ; with us, the part set apart 



for the band ; hence now frequently the band itself, 



in a theatre or at a concert. For the development 



352 



of the orchestra in this latter sense, and the parti- 

 tion of instruments in a representative orchestra, 

 see Music, p. 360. See also BAND, THEATRE. 



Orchids (ORCHIDE* or ORCHIDACE* ), a 

 natural order of endogenous plants distinguished 

 from all other orders in the same alliance by their 

 irregular gynandrous flowers and parietal placenta;. 

 The essential peculiarities of the order are due 

 to the consolidation of the stamens and pistil 

 into one body called the column; to the sup- 

 pression of all the anthers but one in all the 

 genera except those comprising the tribe Cypri- 

 pedire, in which there are two anthers ; to a 

 peculiar condition of the pollen and the structure 

 of the anthers containing it, and to the remarkable 

 forms and development generally assumed by the 

 lip (labellitm) one of the inner members of the 

 perianth which often plays an important mechani- 

 cal part in the fertilising of orchids. The species 

 are perennial herbaceous plants or shrubs of ter- 

 restrial haliit in the temperate and colder parts of 

 the world, but in warmer countries become epiphy- 

 tal, adhering to the stems and limbs of trees, or 1 

 fixing themselves on rocks by their strong fascicu- 

 late roots without penetrating the structure of 

 these, or having any direct connection with the 

 soil. Hence they have been popularly named air 

 plants, as those which assume the epiphytal habit 

 derive the greater part of their nutriment from the 

 atmosphere. Their roots are fibrous or fasciculate 

 or fleshy and tuber-like, the latter being peculiar 

 to the terrestrial species. Their stems are annual, 

 herbaceous, perennial, and woody, and very often 

 pseudo-bulbous. Their leaves are flat or round, 

 equitant, and generally sheathing, often leathery, 

 and having parallel nerves. The flowers are 

 irregular, extremely variable in form, often beauti- 

 fully coloured, and deliciously fragrant, and are 

 either solitary or in spikes, racemes, or panicles. 

 They are composed of six usually petal-like seg- 

 ments : the three outer ones are called sepals, and 

 two of the inner ones, which are usually alike in 

 form and colour, are called petals ; the third inner 

 one, which differs in shape and also generally in 



Fig. 1. Cypripcdinm Boxallii. 



direction from the others, is the lip. Opposite to 

 the lip in the axis of the flower is the column, 

 bearing the anther or anthers with the pistil vari- 

 ously situated relatively to each other. The more 

 obvious features described are well illustrated in 

 the accompanying figures of Cypripedium (see also 

 LADY'S SLIPPER ), Mormodes, Odontoglossum, and 

 Oncidium, in which the six segments of the perianth 

 are so conspicuous as to reveal at a glance their 

 structural relation to each other. 



