ORCHIDS 503 
treatment of Orchids at this period was to pot them in a mixture of 
loam and peat, and keep them constantly plunged in the tan-bed of the 
stove.” No particular allowance seems to have been made for differences 
in the genera or species, or the altitudes at which they grew in nature. 
Early in the nineteenth century Messrs. Loddiges of Hackney began 
to grow Orchids in earnest, and soon after,in the year 1812, they had 
brought to them a specimen of Oncidium bifolium by the gentleman 
who had brought it from Monte Video; but when he told them it had 
been hung up in his cabin without earth and had flowered during the 
-greater part of the voyage, he was considered to have relationship with 
Munchausen and Mandeville. However, the epiphytal Orchids, as the 
known species became more numerous, got the general title of “air 
plants,” and the scientific appellation of Hpidendrums; but they were 
regarded merely as curiosities, and it was only here and there that a 
specimen was induced to flower. The gardeners who accomplished this 
were clever men, and one of the first was Mr. Fairbairn at Claremont, 
who in 1813 flowered Aérides odoratum by placing it in a basket of 
spent tan and moss, hung in the Pinery, and dipped in a bucket of water 
half a dozen times a day. About fifteen years later Sir Joseph Banks 
suspended epiphytes in cylindrical wicker-baskets with a little vegetable 
mould and moss, and thus may be said to have invented the idea of the 
modern Orchid-basket. Mr. Veitch’s account of the Messrs. Loddige’s 
method at that date will be of interest to Orchid-amateurs of to-day: 
“ Loddiges at this time made their compost of rotten wood and moss, with 
a small quantity of sand. Their orchid-stove was heated by brick flues 
to as high a temperature as could be obtained by that means, and by a tan- 
bed in the middle kept constantly moist by watering, and from which 
a steamy evaporation was rising at all times without any ventilation from 
without. Their method was, of course, imitated by probably all cultiva- 
tors. To these hot steamy places Orchids were consigned as soon as 
received, and into which, it was occasionally remarked, it was as 
dangerous to health and comfort to enter as it was into the damp, close 
Jungle in which all tropical Orchids were then supposed to have their 
home.” 
Except that he stipulated for good drainage, this was practically 
the system prescribed by Dr. Lindley, who was for many years the high 
priest of horticulture, and whose precepts and practice dominated almost 
every garden throughout the country, with the result that, as Sir Joseph 
Hooker has remarked, England was for half a century the grave of 
tropical Orchids. For the stream of imports still continued, and wealthy 
amateurs and trade-growers sent out their own collectors, who not only 
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