JuNE, 1908.] THE ORCHID REVIEW. 167 
Cymbidiums do well in an intermediate temperature, and will grow and 
flower well in an ordinary plant house, if given a little extra moisture and 
heat to start them growing again after repotting, so as to prevent them from 
losing their leaves. 
DENDROBIUMS will be in full growth now, and should be given all the 
sun heat possible without scalding the foliage. The young growths should 
be carefully staked or tied up before they get too long, as they easily bend 
over when moving the plants for re-staging or pot-washing, and if the growth 
gets bent a year’s work is wasted. They must be carefully watched for red 
spider, and if it makes its appearance they should be fumigated without 
delay, as spider soon makes the young foliage unsightly and checks growth. 
If the house is kept well damped, and the syringe is freely used in bright 
weather, it seldom causes much trouble after the use of fire heat is avoided 
as much as possible. Plenty of ventilation should be given, but the 
conditions outside must be taken into consideration. No hard and fast rule 
can be laid down, as some days we get many samples of weather, whereas 
another day the ventilators can be opened in the morning and left till closing 
time in the afternoon, so that the only way is to ventilate as much as out- 
side conditions allow without causing a draught. If the houses are studied 
one can tell as soon as a house is entered whether the ventilation is right or 
wrong, and the plants will soon show which method is right. Hardly two 
houses behave alike in this respect, as the position of the house makes a lot 
of difference in the amount of sun heat which reaches it, and the wind also 
makes a great difference to houses adjoining but running perhaps different 
ways. 
During a visit to the Ghent Exhibition we visited most of the Orchid 
nurseries. I think the thing that interested me most was their method of 
ventilation, or rather building their houses. With one exception none of 
them used double staging, and the pipes were kept low down, almost on 
the floor, and the bottom ventilators were large and plentiful, and quashed 
our horticultural builders’ ideas that to ventilate a house properly the air 
must pass round the hot water pipes. Instead of putting their hot water 
Pipes in “lumps,” as our fitters have a special fancy for doing—melon 
house style—they had them at equal distances over the whole of the floor, 
which I thought was a good idea, and the plants were certainly as good as 
most of those one sees on this side of the channel, and when walking 
through the houses the air was moving without the slightest draught. On 
looking along the houses they certainly gave me the impression of being 
more suitable for growing than our “ Railway Viaduct” system of houses. 
Cheapness and utility is their idea of building, but in England a lot of 
Orchid houses must have cost far more to build than the plants cost that 
are grown—and often badly grown—in them. Their houses are not built 
