28o A HISTORY OF GARDENING IN ENGLAND 



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.^ 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 Apperley Bridge, in Yorkshire. In 

 1787 Epidendrum cochleatum flowered at the Royal Gardens, 

 Kew,^ and Epidendnun jragrans the following year. Soon 

 after the beginning of this century several species were cul- 

 tivated for sale by the Loddiges at Hackney, and this firm 

 held for many years a 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 Dendro- 

 biums 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 difficult, and orchid growers met 

 with constant failures. A house was set apart for them at 

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

 study of their habits, tried to discover the right treatment. 

 One of the earhest private orchid-houses was that of the Earl 

 Fitzwilliam, at Wentworth Woodhouse, the genus Miltonia 



^ Travels and Adventures of an Orchid-Hunter, by Albert Millican, 

 1891. 



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



^ A Manual of Orchidaceous Plants, Part X. By James Veitch and 

 Sons, 1894. 



