ORCHID CULTURE PAST AND PRESENT. 



121 



Mormodes, and the like ; not the grand Cattleyas, elegant Odon- 

 toglots, and brilliant Masdevallias of our time ; for such of these as 

 were then imported were doomed to certain destruction in the 

 hot, steamy, unventilated stoves to which they were consigned 

 on their arrival in England, and to the temperature of which 

 they were as great strangers as to our severest winter frosts. 

 And thus perished, within a few months, most of the earliest 

 introduced Cattleyas, Lrelias, Odontoglots, and Oncids, but not 

 without a protest from men who had seen them and other sub- 

 tropical Orchids in their native wilds. So early as 1835 Allan 

 Cunningham reported to Dr. Lindley how different were the 

 conditions under which Australian orchids grew in their native 

 country from those to which they were subjected in the hot- 

 houses of England, and that they should soon perish in them 

 seemed to him but a very natural consequence. Then followed 

 Gibson, who had collected Orchids on the Khasia Hills for the 

 Duke of Devonshire, Gardner on the Organ mountains, William 

 Lobb on the Peruvian Andes, Mr. Ure Skinner on the Cordilleras 

 of Guatemala, Mr. Motley on the mountains of Java. These, one 

 and all, gave utterance to monitory warnings against the folly 

 of subjecting Orchids which naturally grew in a temperate climate 

 to the stifling heat of an Indian jungle. In fact, it was high 

 time that such warnings should be given, for, as private collections 

 were being formed and multiplied, and as high prices were being 

 paid for the choicer kinds, epiphytal Orchids were poured into the 

 country in a continually increasing stream, only too often to 

 tantalise the purchasers with a sight of their lovely flowers and 

 curious forms, and then to languish and die. For more than 

 half a century England was, as Sir Joseph Hooker once observed, 

 " the grave of tropical Orchids." 



But a change of system was at length approaching, not brought 

 about so much by the remonstrance of the travellers just men- 

 tioned, as by the intelligence and sagacity of a few practical 

 gardeners on whom had been laid the responsibility of cultivating 

 the costly collections of their employers. One of the first of 

 these was Joseph Cooper, gardener to Earl Fitzwilliam at Went- 

 worth. Dr. (afterwards Sir William) Hooker, who visited the 

 Orchid house at Wentworth in 1835, was surprised at the degree 

 of success with which the plants were cultivated there, and adds : 

 "I must confess that the sight of this collection, whether the 



