54 THE ORCHID REVIEW. 
the facilities for the proper cultivation of a large general collection may be 
still further increased by moving certain plants from house to house during 
the growing and resting seasons. But however great the facilities the 
cultivator may have at hand, he can hardly be as well equipped as Nature 
herself, and certain plants will refuse to thrive, or even to grow, in 
consequence. 
There are other considerations besides temperature and climate generally, 
one of the most important being the question of food supply, and this opens 
up a wide field of inquiry, but in every case of failure the cultivator may feel 
certain that Nature has a lesson for him if he would, or could, only learn it. 
Many Orchids are not very plastic in constitution, and will not succeed 
under almost any kind of treatment. Even in a wild state some of them 
grow under tolerably uniform conditions, and this arises not so much from 
a lack of the means of dispersal as from inelasticity of constitution, or a 
want of the power to hold their own except under the rather limited 
conditions to which they have become accustomed. If the cultivator 
supplies these conditions they do well, otherwise he regards them as 
intractable subjects. 
One curious thing about some at these intractable subjects is that they will 
sometimes do well in one garden or position and badly in another, and yet 
no one seems able to find out what condition is present in the one case and 
wanting in the other. Were this known it would be possible to guard 
against failure by supplying the essential conditions. The beautiful Disa 
grandiflora affords an excellent example of this. It grows with some people 
like a weed, but with others it will not succeed, treat it as they will. What 
can be the cause of this? Is it a question of soil, situation, humidity, 
temperature, impurities in the atmosphere, or what? This would form an 
excellent subject for discussion, as everyone would like to grow it well, and 
some are said to treat it like “ordinary geraniums,” and with complete 
success. It is said to grow at 1,100 to 3,300 feet elevation on Table 
Mountain, by the sides of streams and rivulets, which frequently become 
dry in the summer. 
Vanda ccerulea is often considered intractable, but I believe this arises 
from wrong—and by this I mean unnatural—treatment. It grows where 
there is plenty of heat in summer, but a low temperature and even frost in 
winter ; and the lesson I should learn from this is to put it in cool quarters 
for the winter, so that it can rest. Those who treat it thus succeed best 
with it. Keeping it in a state of vegetative activity in the East Indian 
house all the winter is, I believe, neither natural nor wise. All Vandas 
cannot be treated alike any more than some other genera. 
Phalznopses are often considered intractable, yet some people grow them 
well with no special trouble. Some say that all depends on the house, and 
