204 THE ORCHID REVIEW. [SEPTEMBER, 1917. 
capsules 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 situations 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 that seemed to promise favourable results. But as it was in the 
early days of Orchid hybridisation, so it is now, we seem as far off as ever 
from hitting upon a method by which at least a moderate amount of 
success may be calculated upon; failures were at first, as now, innumer- 
able, and numberless such are without doubt inevitable. 
Among the most cogent causes of failure in the raising of seedling 
‘Orchids, there can be no doubt that the altered conditions of climate, 
especially the deficiency of sunlight, and the artificial treatment to which 
the plants are necessarily subject in the glass houses of Europe, are the 
greatest. The capsules neither can nor do attain the perfection natural to 
them in their native countries, and it is more than probable that, 
independently of the capsules grown in our houses being the production of 
-cross-breeding, they do not yield a fractional part of the quantity of good 
seed they would do in their native land. And so with their progeny—the 
tender seedlings are brought into life under circumstances so different from 
‘what they would have been in their native land, that it is not at all 
‘Surprising that multitudes of them perish in their earliest infancy. 
Adverse as are some of the influences under which we work to obtain 
the capsules, there is but little difficulty in getting them, and in abundance 
too; sometimes even from crosses that, to the systematic botanist, would 
‘seem almost past belief; but then comes the crux. Good seed is the all 
important factor in producing healthy seedlings, and this, unfortunately, 
from reasons already partially reverted to, is obtainable but in a very 
minute proportion of the whole. Seed we get in profusion, but so little of 
it germinates that the patience of the most persevering is put to a severe 
test. The seeds of hundreds of capsules have been sown without yielding 
a single result. In very many cases only a solitary plant has been raised 
from a capsule that must have contained thousands of seeds ; in very few 
instances indeed has the number of seedlings from one cross reached a 
hundred. It is true that we have raised many seedlings in the aggregate, 
but many of them have appeared when least expected, and when wé 
consider the myriads of seeds that have been sown, and the comparatively 
few plants raised, we cannot be said to have achieved very great success 
