A RETROSPECT OF ORCHID CULTURE. 117 



constantly published such items of information as came to hand that 

 he believed would afford useful hints to cultivators. 



The splendid specimens alluded to by Lindley were chiefly Brazilian 

 Maxillarias, West Indian Epidendra, Cataseta and Mormodes from the 

 hot valleys of Guiana and Central America, Saccolabiums and Dendrobes 

 from the Indian jungle and the like; not the grand Cattleyas. elegant 

 Odontoglots and brilliant Masdevellias that form the most conspicuous 

 ornaments of the collections of our time, for such of these as were 

 then imported were doomed to certain destruction in the hot steamy, 

 unventilated stoves to which they were consigned on their arrival in 

 England, and to the temperature of which they were as great 

 strangers as to our severest winter frosts. And thus perished within 

 a few months most of the earliest introduced Cattleyas, La?lias, 

 Odontoglots and Oncids, but not without a protest from men who 

 had seen them and other orchids growing in the temperate and 

 cool alpine regions within the tropics. So early as 1835, Allen 

 Cunningham reported to Dr. Lindley how different were the conditions 

 under which Australian orchids grew in their native country from 

 those to which they were subjected in the hot-houses of England, 

 and that they should soon perish in them seemed to him but a 

 very natural consequence.* Then followed Mr. G. Ure Skinner who 

 gathered many orchids on the Cordilleras of Guatemala, Gibson who 

 collected them on the Khasia Hills for the Duke of Devonshire, 

 Gardner on the Organ Mountains, William Lobb on the Peruvian 

 Andes, and Motley on the mountains of Java. These, one and 

 all, gave monitory warnings against the folly of subjecting orchids 

 which naturally grew in a temperate climate, to the stifling heat of 

 an Indian jungle. In fact, it was high time such warnings should 

 be given, for as private collections were being formed and multiplied 

 and high prices were being paid for the choice kinds, epiphytal 

 orchids were being poured into the country in a continually increasing 

 stream, only too often to tantalise the purchasers with a transitory 

 sight of their lovely flowers and curious forms, and then to languish 

 and die. For more than half a century England was, as Sir Joseph 

 Hooker once observed, " the grave of tropical orchids." 



But a change of system was at length approaching, not brought 

 about so much by the remonstrance of travellers like those just 

 * Bot. Reg. 1835, sub. t. 1699. 



