PRELIMINAKY NOTICE. 



This IManual 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 dcsideratuiii 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 horticul- 

 tural aspect and its complicated and unscientific nomenclature, have 

 rendered the compilation of such a IManual within a stated time almost 

 an impossibility. 



Under these circumstances, and yielding to 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 G-enera Plantarmn, the most profound and, at the 

 same time, the most intelligible exposition of the Orchideaj 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 use 

 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. 



