THE ORCHID REVIEW. 167 



Another excellent method is to take several pieces of the hard core of the 

 Osmunda root, and make it into a solid ball, a foot long by seven or eight 

 inches in diameter, on to which the Cattleyas are nailed by means of wire 

 staples. Plants are also nailed to boards, with merely a light layer of peat 

 between, a method securing economy of time and space. 



"All our Orchids," he remarks, "are top-dressed, when growth 

 commences, with a mixture of chopped sphagnum leaf-mould, and some 

 fertiliser, as bone-flour, Clay's or other concentrated manure. The leaf- 

 mould is used in the proportion of one part to four parts of moss. 

 Experiments have convinced me that this method is far preferable to using 

 leaf-mould entirely. The root action of the plant in this mixture is very 

 vigorous, and if you can only get the roots moving the top will grow, as a 

 matter of course. This top-dressing is applied wet, and, when thrown on, 

 sticks wherever it falls. It can, consequently be applied to plants growing 



The days of the wretched looking Cattleya gradually dwindling to a 

 condition of innocuous desuetude are gone by. The bulbs the plants make 

 under artificial culture, when liberally treated, are far superior to the bulbs 

 they produce in their native home. This we must accept as convincing 

 evidence that the Orchid can assimilate food supplied to it as easily as a 

 geranium, and with as beneficial results. Occasionally, where only a few 

 plants are grown, they may be seen in a miserable condition, but in our 

 large establishments, where plants are counted by the thousand, they are in 

 perfect health and vigour. Almost every grower has his own pet theory, 

 and supplies his plants with sheep manure, bone flour, cow manure, or 

 something else ; but they all use some kind of manure, and as long as the 

 plant gets a sufficiency of nitrogen and other essentials, where it gets them 

 from, or how, is unimportant. 



The American Orchid grower is head and shoulders above his European 

 compeer in the size and number of the flowers he can produce from a given 

 space, and while, of course, some credit is due to the climate, most of th e 

 credit is due to the grower, who is always ready to depart from the old rut 

 when experiment convinces him that he can grow his plants better some 

 other way. 



Plants have constant need of nourishment during the period of growth. 

 Supply that need and your plants will be certain to give satisfaction. 

 Neither the Belgium grower, with his leaf-mould, nor the American grower, 

 with his fertilisers, can be criticised if each produces satisfactory results 

 financially and otherwise. The spirit of progress is in the air, and if the 

 advance in the culture of Orchids is as pronounced in the next decade as it 

 has been in the past one, great things may be confidently looked for. 



