ORCHID CULTURE PAST AND PRESENT. 



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culture that subsequently followed. This was the heating of 

 glass-houses by means of hot-water pipes, which were first used 

 for this purpose on a small scale by Mr. Anthony Bacon, at 

 Aberaman, in Glamorganshire, and afterwards by the same 

 gentleman at Elcot, near Newbury. The inventor of the process 

 is said to have been a Mr. Atkinson. The change from the brick 

 flue with the tan bed to heating by hot water was nothing less 

 than the substitution of the power of regulating the equality of 

 the temperature for too great inequality ; the obtaining of almost 

 perfect control over the heating power, with a great diminution 

 of the labour of attending to the fires, in the place of a very 

 imperfect control with unremitting attention day and night ; 

 the admission of fresh warmed air in lieu of no ventilation at 

 all, to say nothing of the smoke and noxious vapours that 

 were constantly escaping through the cracks and fissures of the 

 flue. 



Such a combination of circumstances could scarcely fail 

 sooner or later to bring about a change in the cultural methods 

 that had been in vogue so long — a change that was to result not 

 only in a more rational treatment of Orchids coming from high 

 altitudes, but also in a modification of that applied to purely 

 tropical kinds. And so it happened ; but the change was so slow 

 and so gradual in taking place, that, looking back upon the state 

 of Orchid culture forty years ago, and upon what we are now 

 accustomed to see daily, one can scarcely suppress a feeling of 

 astonishment that its history should present to us the phase it does. 

 During the twenty years that elapsed between 1840 and 1860, 

 that is to say, from about the time that Mr. Barker, of Birming- 

 ham, sent Ross to Mexico, and when Linden began to make 

 known to science and to horticulture the surprising wealth of 

 Cattleyas and Odontoglots inhabiting the Cordilleras of New 

 Granada — these plants perished under the barbarous treatment 

 they received in the hot-houses of this country almost as fast as 

 they were imported. To such an extent were the losses felt, that 

 Lindley, in a remarkable article published in the Gardeners' 

 Chronicle towards the end of 1859, pronounced their treatment 

 " a deplorable failure," and which Mr. Bateman also some years 

 later characterised as " incredible folly." But the spell which had 

 held Orchid culture in thraldom for half a century was at length 



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