NINETEENTH CENTURY 279 



In the last two decades a different style, with flowers less 

 compact, in delicate gradations of shades, were produced in 

 bewildering quantities. 



The Dahlia, 1 a native of Mexico, was first introduced in 1789 

 from Spain by Lady Bute, but was lost and reintroduced in 

 1804 by Lady Holland, and twenty years later the craze for 

 these flowers reached its height. The Fuchsia appeared in 

 this country within the first five-and-twenty years of this 

 century, although named by Plumier after Fuchs about a 

 hundred years earlier. The story is told of how Lee saw a 

 Fuchsia plant in a window of a small house in Wapping. He 

 was so struck with the flower that he went in and asked the 

 old woman to whom it belonged whether she would sell it to 

 him. She, however, at first refused to part with it, as it had 

 been sent to her by her husband, who was a sailor, but was 

 persuaded to let him have it when he offered her eight guineas, 

 and promised to give her two of the first plants he reared. 

 He succeeded in getting some three hundred cuttings to strike, 

 and presented the old woman with her share, while the rest, 

 with their graceful hanging flowers, astonished the visitors to 

 his Nursery, and brought him in a profit of about £300. 2 



That which perhaps would most astonish a gardener of the 

 fifteenth century, could he but for one moment see it, would 

 be an orchid house. Numerous as orchids are to-day, they 

 nearly all have been imported during the last sixty years. 

 There are still tracts of country which have not been searched, 

 but most of the orchid-growing portions of the globe have been 

 ransacked, and these glorious plants packed off by thousands 

 to this country, leaving in some cases their native habitats bare. 

 One reads accounts of whole districts being denuded of these 

 treasures ; for instance, a certain locality, once the home of 

 Miltonia vexillaria, was so pillaged that the woods in the 

 vicinity " have become pretty well cleared." During one 

 search for Odontoglossum crispum, when ten thousand plants 

 were collected, four thousand trees were cut down to obtain 



1 Named after Dahl, the Swedish botanist, and quite distinct from 

 the Dalea called after Dr. Samuel Dale (1659-1739). When Dahlias 

 were first popular in England, their name was pronounced with a broad- 

 sounding " ah." 



2 Notes and Queries, September, 1894. 



