THE ORCHID REVIEW. 55 
point toa celebrated little house belonging to Sir Frederick Wigan, at Clare 
_ Lawn, East Sheen, where they always succeed. But the nature of the 
house is a very important matter, and houses often differ considerably in 
their arrangements for a due supply of light, heat, and moisture ; and faults 
of construction are not so easily remedied as faults in the nature of the 
potting materials. 
Bolleas and Pescatoreas are interesting and beautiful Orchids, and many 
people have tried to grow them, but with little success. It has been. 
remarked that they will do well for a time, and then suddenly go back, no 
one knows why. One day I was at Messrs. B. S. Williams and Sons’ 
Nursery at Holloway, and found several plants in a rather close propagating 
house, and enquiring about them, learnt that they had been there for many 
years, and kept growing and flowering, pieces being taken off for sale. 
Messrs. Sander also grow them well in a rather warm moist house. This 
is rational treatment. They grow wild in rather moist shady woods at a 
moderate elevation on the Andes, and, having no pseudobulbs, must not be 
dried. In fact, they seem to keep growing and producing occasional flowers 
almost throughout the year. If treated differently they become intractable. 
Examples might be multiplied, but these will suffice to illustrate my 
meaning. 
How little will sometimes suffice to upset the constitution of an Orchid is 
illustrated by an example in the propagating pits at the present time. It is 
a branch. of a tree sent home from the Kilimanjaro district with two 
Angrecums growing on it—A. bilobum var. Kirkii, and a small leafless 
species, which I have described as A. Smithii. Since coming home, the 
former has increased in size, and is flourishing, but the latter is decreasing, 
and, unless it alters, will soon die. It may be asked how much nearer to 
natural conditions one can get than this, where the plants have not even 
been removed from the branch; but against this I would urge that the 
temperature, light, amount of humidity, seasons, and even food supply may 
be completely different from what they were at home. The former plant 
looked like a seedling, which may account for its improvement, but the 
latter is evidently unhappy in its new conditions, and its being leafless may 
partly account for its smaller power to cope with new conditions. No two 
plants are exactly alike in constitution, and hence a change may affect them 
quite differently. In the case of two plants growing together, one might be 
under ideal conditions-—i.e., those under which it attained its maximum 
development—and the other not. A change would injure the former, but 
might even benefit the latter, if in the right direction. 
(To be continued.) 
ee 
