PRELIMINARY NOTICE. 



This Manual is being compiled to supply amateurs and cultivators of 

 exotic Orchids with a fuller account of the principal genera, species and 

 varieties cultivated under glass, than is contained in the Manuals hitherto 

 in use. 



The rapid extension of Orchid culture during the last quarter of a 

 century, resulting from the increased taste for and appreciation of this 

 beautiful and interesting order of plants, has, in our opinion, created the 

 desideratum which we are now attempting to supply. The prominent 

 place, too, occupied by Orchids in the columns of the Horticultural Press, 

 and the surprising amount of practical and varied information respecting 

 them disseminated through its agency, has also stimulated the desire 

 to obtain all the leading facts in a condensed form, to which easy 

 reference may at any time be made. 



So numerous are the species and varieties of Orchids at present in 

 cultivation, and to which additions are constantly being made by new 

 discoveries and by artificial hybridisation, that the labour attending the 

 compilation of a Manual sufficiently comprehensive to meet the wants of 

 cultivators must necessarily demand much time. Moreover, the present 

 unsatisfactory state of Orchidology, especially in its horticultural aspect 

 and its complicated and unscientific nomenclature, have rendered the 

 compilation of such a Manual within a stated time almost an impossibihty. 



Under these circumstances, and yielding t(j the solicitations of patrons 

 and friends, we have decided upon issuing the work in parts, each part 

 containing a monograph of the cultivated species and varieties of one of 

 the most important genera, or of a group of genera. 



Little explanation of the plan of the work is here needed ; the parts 

 as issued must speak for themselves. We have only to state that in 

 the scientific classification and sequence of the genera we have followed, 

 with but trifling deviations, the arrangement of Bentham and Hooker 

 as elaborated in their Genera Plantarum , the most profound and, at the 

 same time, the most intelligible exposition of the Orchideae extant. In 

 the nomenclature of the species, we have adhered to the Laws of Botanical 

 nomenclature adopted by the International Botanical Congress, held 

 at Paris in August, 1867. 



In the description of the species, we have been compelled to uae 

 occasionally a few technical terms to avoid cumbrous circumlocutions ; 

 at the conclusion of the work we propose giving a glossary of the terms 

 so used. In the cultural notes we have quoted temperatures in the 

 Centigrade scale with the equivalent Fahrenheit readings, in the hope 

 that the far more rational scale, now almost universally adopted in 

 scientific investigations, may also come into use in horticulture. The 

 literary references in italics indicate coloured plates of the species or 

 variety described. 



