116 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



British gardens, some Orchids, including Phaius grandifolius 

 (Bletia Tankervilleae) and Cymbidium ensifolium ; these were 

 cultivated by him prior to 1780. In 1787 Epidendrum coch- 

 leatum flowered for the first time in this country in the Boyal 

 Gardens at Kew, and E. fragrans in October of the following 

 year. Seven years later, fifteen species, chiefly West Indian 

 Epidendra, are recorded as being cultivated in the Royal Gardens, 

 " in very great heat, and with fragments of half-rotten bark at 

 their roots." 



As a consequence of the political circumstances of the times, 

 the first epiphytal Orchids received in England were brought 

 from the West Indies, chiefly from Jamaica, by naval officers and 

 by captains in the merchant service, who gave no certain infor- 

 mation respecting the habits of the plants and their environment 

 in their native country beyond the bare fact that they grew on 

 trees. They were thence believed to be parasites like the 

 Mistletoe of our woods and orchards, a belief that became so 

 firmly rooted that it held its sway for many years even after 

 their true character had been determined by Dr. Robert Brown 

 and Dr. Lindley. The prevalence of this belief was prejudicial to 

 the progress of Orchid culture, for it induced attempts at 

 cultivation that were necessarily futile. The Editor of the 

 Botanical Register, under tab. 17, Epidendrum nutans, which was 

 first brought to England from the West Indies by Admiral Bligh 

 in 1793, quaintly remarks that "the cultivation of tropical 

 parasites was long regarded as hopeless ; it appeared a vain 

 attempt to find substitutes for the various trees each species 

 might affect, within the limits of a hot-house." 



Nevertheless Orchids continued to be imported, and even in 

 those days, when a voyage to or from the West Indies occupied 

 two months, their extraordinary tenacity of life after removal 

 from the trees on which they were found growing was observed. 



Of the treatment the plants received we can only here and 

 there catch a glimpse from the occasional notes that appeared 

 from time to time in the Botanical Magazine, which had been 

 founded by William Curtis in 1793. Thus, under tab. 387, 

 Cymbidium aloifolium, which had been received from India by 

 Mr. Vere, of Kensington, a few years previously, it is stated that 

 this plant was placed in a pot of earth and plunged into the tan 

 bed of the stove, where it grew but did not flower. This species 



