MXKTKKXTH CENTCRY. 289 



" have bacome 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.* 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.t 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 

 of his niece, Mrs. Hird, at Appesby Bridge in Yorkshire. In 

 1787 Epidendrum cochleatum flowered at the Royal Gardens, 

 Kew,J and Epidendrum fragrans the following year. Soon after 

 the beginning of this century, several species were cultivated 

 for sale by the Loddiges at Hackney, and this firm held for many 

 years a most conspicuous place among orchid growers. As 

 early as 1812 they grew a plant of Oncidium bifolium, which 

 was brought from Monte Video, and about the same year the first 

 of the Vandas, Aerides, and Dendrobiums were sent from India by 

 Dr. Roxburgh. Although plants of many orchids were coming 

 to this country during the first thirty years of this century, so 

 little was known of their native places, and their conditions of 

 life, that their cultivation was extremely difiicult, and orchid 

 growers met with constant failures. A house was set apart for 

 them at Kew, and Lindley at the Horticultural Society also, by 



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

 t W. B. Hcmsley, Gardener s Chronicle, 18S7. 



\ A Manual of Orchidaceous Plants, part x. By Jnmcs Vcitch nnd Sons, 

 1894. 



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