11(J GENERAL REVIEW OP THE 0KCHIDE:E. 



West Indies iu 1789 by Commodore Gardner^ and presented by 

 him to the Apothecaries' Garden at Chelsea, where it was cultivated 

 by Mr. Fairbairn, the Curator, in pots of earth composed of rotten 

 wood and decayed leaves, plunged into the tan bed of a pit.* In 

 1794, fifteen species of epiphytal orchids are recorded as being 

 cnltivated in the Eoyal Gardens at Kew, most of which had been 

 brought from the West Indies by Admiral Bligli and other officers 

 employed in that region. They included Ornithidium coccineum, 

 Oncidium altissimum, On. carthaginense, Lycaste Barring tonice, Bpidendrum 

 ciliare, Isochilus linearis, etc., all of which at that time were referred 

 to Epidendrum. They were cultivated in the stove in very great 

 heat with fragments of half-rotten bark at their roots. Before the 

 end of the century ten more species were added to the list, but 

 none of them of any interest horticulturally. 



As a consequence of the political circumstances of the times, the 

 first epiphytal orchids received in England were brought from the 

 West Indies, chiefly from Jamaica^ by naval officers and by captains 

 in the merchant service who gave no certain information respecting 

 the habits of the plants aud their environment in their native country 

 beyond the bare fact that nearly all of them grew upon trees. 

 They were thence believed to be parasites like our Mistletoe, a 

 belief that became so firmly rooted that it prevailed for many years 

 even after their true nature had been ascertained. The prevalence 

 of this belief was prejudicial to the progress of orchid culture, for 

 it induced attempts at cultivation that were necessarily futile. The 

 editor of the Botanical Register under Ejpidendrum nutans, tab. ] 7 

 (1815), quaintly remarks that ^^ the cultivation of tropical parasites 

 was long regarded as hopeless ; it appeared a vain attempt to find 

 substitutes for the various trees each species might affect mthin the 

 limits of a hot-house." 



Nevertheless epiphytal orchids continued to be imported, and even 

 in those days when a voyage to or from the West Indies occupied 

 two months, their extraordinary tenacity of life after removal from 

 the trees on which they were found growing was observed. Of the 

 treatment the plants received we can only here and there catch a 

 glimpse from the occasional notes that appeared from time to time in 



* Id. sub. t. 152. 



