PREFACE 



Orchidaceous Plants ' affords a suitable 



At the 



The completion of the ' Second Century of 



opportunity for saying a few words on the subject of Orchidology generally 



time of the completion of the ' First Century ' the Orchid mania had begun to lose 



somewhat of the intensity that marked the period from 1832 to 1852,— a circumstance 



that was chiefly attributable to a great falling off in the supply of new species 



such species, at all events, as could then be made to submit 



of 



to the skill of the culti- 

 vator. New arrivals there certainly were, — the collections of Warszewicz, for exam- 



but these were almost entirely formed 



cool 



and therefore perished 



under hot treatment nearly as rapidly as they were received. So great, indeed, was sup- 

 posed to be the difficulty of succeeding with plants of this description, that collectors 

 declined to purchase the most beautiful Odontoglossa, merely because they despaired of 



r 



being able to grow them ! And yet, as we now find, all that was required was to place 

 the Orchids of cool countries in houses in which the temperature was not higher than 

 that to which they had been habituated in their native wilds. It seems incredible 

 that so obvious a principle should have been steadily ignored for more than 



1 



twenty years ; yet 



The accidental circumstance of our first Orchids 



b 



coast or riverside plant 



or 



deni 



Indies, leadin 



to 



larily 



of the warm islands of the East and 

 hot treatment, had induced the notion 



that under no other system could any tropical 

 ill-success that attended all our attempts to deal 



I be grown ; 

 the Orchids 



and h 



?nce the 

 Mexican 



and Peruvian Andes, where the climate much more closely resembles that of the 



i 



