192 AN ESSAY. 



of the former expressing their desire of cultivating 

 certain plants orchids, for instance, but that they 

 only had one greenhouse or hothouse, and not a special 

 one, as required for orchids, at least their gardeners 

 said so, and they seemed to believe it themselves, and 

 especially when they may have heard that half a dozen 

 houses are necessary to grow with success that family 

 of plants. Orchids well ? it may le, after all, that 

 I am wrong, and that a series of such plant dwellings 

 would greatly facilitate their cultivation. But how 

 many lovers of those plants CAN and would afford the 

 means to do it on THAT LINE ? Yery few, indeed. I, 

 for one. I would be scared, even if I had the means 

 to do it. Six houses exclusively for orchids, without 

 the admixture of other plants ! That gives me chills ! 



fits of " cacoethes loquendi " itching of talking 



of expressing my opinions, as our friend iheplanti- 

 cide, spoken above. Why should I not express my 

 Yankee notions or Yankeefied ideas, as well as any 

 one ? Well ! if this privilege, no ! right! is granted to 

 ine, / here, emphatically and with all my profound 

 convictions based on a little experience, and with all 

 due regard and deference to all parties, including the 

 elucubrations of theorists on that specialty, I affirm, I 

 maintain, that orchids can be cultivated in a mixed 

 collection of plants tropical or others. Of course, 

 tropical orchids with miscellaneous tropical plants, and 



