PHAL.?:XOPSIS. 19 



most difficult cultural problems horticulturists have been called upon to 

 solve The most accurate knowledge of the environment of the species 

 in their native home afibrds, at best, but a subordinate aid to the 

 solution of that problem, for an attempt to imitate the conditions 

 under which they grow wild would simply prove impracticable, apart 

 from the great difference in the climatic phenomena of places 

 situated in latitudes so far removed -irom our own. A fev/ instances 

 quoted from authentic sources will make this clear. In north Borneo, 

 PlioJcBiiopsis amahiUs {P. grandifiora, Lindl.) grows high up on trees 

 screened from the sun by a leafy canopy, deluged with rain for more 

 than half the year, and constantly fanned by cool sea breezes.* In 

 strong contrast to this, P. Loioii grows on limestone rocks that rise 

 suddenly out of the delta of the rivers Gyne, Ataran, and others in 

 Tenasserim, where the country surrounding these hills is under water 

 the greater part of the year, and where, during the dry season, the 

 plants are literally scorched, nothing remaining but the roots, f Again, 

 in contrast to both the preceding cases, P. fetraspis grows suspended 

 from the branches of Mangrove trees, a few feet above water along the 

 swampy shores of the Andaman Islands ; 1 and P. Stuartiana has been 

 observed on the coast of Mindanao, growing on the branches of trees so 

 close to the sea that it can scarcely fail to be washed by the salt spray 

 during a storm. It is thence evident that the conditions under which 

 Phalaenopses can be grown successfully in this country can only be 

 ascertained from experiment and from observations, extended over a long 

 period, of the behaviour of the plants under the altered circumstances 

 in which they are placed. The experiments, at first necessarily of an 

 empirical character, have now extended over more than half a century, 

 and the results derived from them may be fairly reckoned among the 

 best achievements of the horticultural skill of the present day, for 

 Phalsenopsis may now be said to be firmly established in European gardens. 

 It will be directly inferred from the geographical distribution of the 

 genus that the Phalsenopses require a higher average temperature than 

 the majority of the cultivated orchids, and to meet this requirement 

 a separate house or compartment of a house is, when practicable, 

 especially devoted to them. A low-pitched house is almost invariably 

 preferred, but in the constructive details much diversity prevails, one 

 cultivator preferring one kind of arrangement, another another kind, 

 each affording some advantages that secure for it a preference. The 

 most prominent instance of the successful cultivation of these plants 

 known to us is at Tring Park, the seat of the Right Honourable 

 Lord Rothschild ; a general description of the house in which they are 

 grown will thence serve better than any form vi construction that we 



* Burbidge, Gardens of the Su)i, p. 52. 



f Major-Gen. E, S. Berkeley in Oard. Chron. I. s. 3 (1887), p. 280. 



+ Idem. II. s. 3 p. 74. 



