554 Atmospheric Moisture of Hot-houses, 



orchidaceous plants as the Messrs. Loddiges, and I need hardly 

 say few are so successful in their cultivation, and especially in 

 their propagation. 



To make these observations bear on Mr. Wailes's enquiry, 

 let us suppose three orchidaceous houses of the same size and 

 aspect, and each filled with the same kind of plants, and treated 

 for three years as much alike as possible, in regard to heat, air, 

 and moisture ; it is a hundred to one if all the species will be 

 found to flourish in the same degree in. each house. Much of 

 the success of growing orchidaceous plants, or, indeed, any 

 kind of plants, depends on certain manipulations, or minutiae, 

 which can neither be taught nor described ; but which must 

 be learned by experience : and this is the only point, in the 

 whole circle of cultivation, where the empiric has the advantage 

 of the man of science, and a point, too, from which he is not 

 likely soon to be driven. 



As regards my treatment of newly imported Orchidaceae, and 

 the rearing of young and unestablished plants of this interesting 

 family, the following is the substance of my answer to Mr. 

 Wailes, the publication of which may be of some use to those 

 beginning to grow this tribe of plants ; or to those having bo- 

 tanical correspondents in tropical countries, where these plants 

 can be procured. Besides, I made a conditional promise to 

 Mr. Wailes to publish this answer, if he would allow the pub- 

 lication of his very interesting letter on horticultural hygrometry, 

 which is a fit companion to Mr. Ellis's valuable paper (p. 481.), 

 bearing in a great measure on the same subject. Papers or discus- 

 sions of this nature are much wanted in horticultural literature. 

 We of the old blue apron school are getting tired of planting 

 cabbages, pruning roses, and watering cauliflowers. 



But to return to the Orchidaceae, the paper alluded to by Mr. 

 Wailes, in Paxton's Magazine of Botany, is from a private com- 

 munication of mine to Mr. Paxton, part of which I would 

 have omitted, if I had thought it was to be published. How- 

 ever, as far as it goes, it gives an idea of the practice I then fol- 

 lowed, and which I follow still, with little variation. If I were 

 allowed to speak through the trumpet Orchideae (Epidendrum 

 tibicinis), I might say that the collection at Kingsbury, as far 

 as its age is concerned, shows as much evidence of successful 

 cultivation as any such collection in the country. It (the 

 paper in Paxton's Magazine) also shows the aversion I then 

 entertained of pot culture for this tribe, and that aversion has 

 been increasing ever since ; and I am quite certain that no 

 argument will ever induce me to reconcile myself to the present 

 hideous mode of pot culture, viz. the plants placed on mounds 

 of earth raised over the tops of large pots. Add to this, the 

 still more frightful system of plunging these large pots in tan, to 

 receive bottom heat. The heat from the tan is all gone in a few 



