296 A HISTORY OF GARDENING IN ENGLAND. 



hundred cuttings to strike, and presented the old woman 

 with her .share, while the rest, with their graceful hanging flowers, 

 astonished the visitors to his Nursery, and brought him in a 

 profit of about 300.* 



That which perhaps would most astonish a gardener of 

 the fifteenth century, could he but for one moment see it, 

 would be an orchid house. Numerous as orchids are to-day, 

 they nearly all have been imported during the last fifty years. 

 There are still tracts of country which have not been searched, 

 but most of the orchid-growing portions of the globe have been 

 ransacked, and these glorious plants packed off by thousands to 

 this country, leaving in some cases their native habitats bare. 

 One reads accounts of whole districts being denuded of these 

 treasures ; for instance, a certain locality, once the home of 

 Miltonia vexillaria, was so pillaged that the woods in the vicinity 

 " have become pretty well cleared." During one search for 

 Odontoglossum crispum, when ten thousand plants were 

 collected, four thousand trees were cut down to obtain them, 

 the camp of the explorers was moved on week by week as they 

 exhausted the plants in their neighbourhood. t The sight of this 

 glorious wealth of flowers, which has gladdened many orchid 

 hunters, will be denied to future generations, if the searchers 

 are not more moderate in their demands on the virgin forests of 

 the Old and New World. 



The first tropical orchid which flowered in this country was 

 a specimen of Bletia verecunda, which was sent from Providence 

 Island, one of the Bahamas, in 1731, to Peter Collinson.J In 

 Miller's Dictionary, two or three tropical orchids are mentioned, 

 and some were grown by him at Chelsea. He says of the 

 Vanilla which was sent to him " from Carthagena in New 

 Spain," that " this plant flowered in the Chelsea Garden, but 

 .wanting its proper support it lived but one year." In 1778 

 Dr. John Fothergill brought home two species from China, one 

 of which, Phaius grandifolius, flowered soon after in the stove 



* N. and Q., Sept., 1894. 



f Travels and Adventures of an Orchid Hunter. By Albert Millican, 1891 . 



J W. B. Hemsley, Gardener's Chronicle, 1887. 



