SOME RESULTS OV THE HYBEIDISATION OF OKCHIDS. 141 



subject in our Exeter nursery about the year 1853. The possibility 

 of muling orchids was suggested to him by Mr. John Harris, a 

 surgeon of Exeter, who pointed out to him the reproductive organs 

 seated in the column, and showed that the application of the pollhiia 

 to the stigmatic surface was analogous to the dusting of the stigma 

 of other flowers with pollen. 



This simple fact being once fairly grasped, the work of hybridisation 

 proceeded apace, and from that time to the present experiments 

 have been carried on uninterruptedly in our horticultural establishments. 

 The flowers of showy species of Cattleya, Lgelia, Calanthe, etc., were 

 fertilised with the pollinia of other species, and even the flowers 

 of supposed different but of course allied genera were also operated 

 upon in the same way. Capsules were produced in abundance which 

 in due course proved their maturity by dehiscing and thus the desired 

 seed was at hand. Then arose a great difficulty, a difficulty which 

 still exists, namely, to discover the most suitable method of raising 

 seedlings. The seeds of orchids are minute chaffy bodies of extreme 

 lightness; so minute are they that an ordinary pocket lens is powei'less 

 to enable one to know whether the seeds are likely to contain a 

 germ or are mere lifeless dust. When growing wild it is evident 

 that the contents of the mature caps ales after dehiscence are more 

 or less scattered by the wind, perhaps wafted to great distances 

 until they settle on the branches of trees, on shelving rocks or other 

 suitable substrata where the seeds can germinate and the seedlings 

 firmly affix themselves. Following or at least believing that we were 

 following Nature, so far as the altered circumstances of artificial 

 cultivation allowed, every method or available means that could be 

 thought of was brought into request to secure the germination of 

 the seed. It was sown upon blocks of wood, pieces of tree-fern 

 stems, strips of cork, upon the moss that surfaced the pots of the 

 growing plants, in fact, in any situation which seemed to promise 

 favourable results. Among the most cogent causes of failure in the 

 raising of seedling orchids there can be no doubt that the greatest 

 are the altered conditions of climate, especially the deficiency of sun- 

 light, and the artificial treatment to which the plants are necessarily 

 subject in the glass-houses of Europe. The capsules neither can nor 

 do attain the perfection natural to them in their native countries, 

 and it is more than Drobable that, independently of the capsules 



