The Culture of Greenhouse Orchids ! 



advice will probably be unsound. I once heard a i 

 great horticulturist mutter, when a distinguished 

 but unpractical j^ersonage was holding forth, "I 

 never want to hear what orchids do at home — it 

 only puts me out ! " He referred, of course, to the 

 impressions which an unskilled traveller brings 

 home. 



Such observers, however intelligent, do not bear 

 in memory that the wild orchid has to make the 

 struo:c:le for existence as best it can. The seed 

 grows where it chances to fall, unless, of course, the ' 

 situation be so unfavourable that it cannot live. i 

 No mortal watches it ; no one cares whether it j 

 thrive or perish. It may worry along for years, | 

 never flowering, perhaps, just keeping life enough j 

 to grow at the appointed time. We see daily i 

 evidence of this. I once bought a mass of Zcclia ! 

 pwrpv/rata, in which not a pseudo-bulb for ten years, .| 

 or perhaps twenty, had reached the height of four ' 

 inches. Then suddenly the conditions changed. ' 

 Seasons favourable to its peculiar situation occurred ' 



or it crept out of those unsuitable surroundino-s ; '; 

 forthwith the pseudo-bulbs lengthened, swelled, and 

 flowered. But generally, no doubt, in such cases ' 



the orchid drags on a wretched existence, contend- 

 ing with adverse circumstances. Nevertheless the 

 uninitiated traveller who sees it blooming, makes 



