ORCHID CULTURE PAST AND PRESENT. 



125 



Diacrium bicornutum, and others that can be named ? Doubt- 

 less the impossibility of exactly, or even approximately imitating 

 in our houses the climatic conditions under which these Orchids 

 grow in their native countries, together with our still imperfect 

 acquaintance with their surroundings in situ, has much to do 

 with the failure to cultivate them satisfactorily. But ought we 

 to be content with such crude empiricisms as hanging them up 

 first in one place, then in another, then in a third, and finally 

 leaving them to their fate ? 



I invite discussion on these points. 



There is another subject to be mooted, one that has an 

 important bearing on Orchid culture in the immediate future. 

 The large and constantly increasing number of Orchid collections 

 in this country, as well as in America and on the continent of 

 Europe, has called into existence a class of gardeners whose sole 

 occupation is the cultivation of Orchids, than which no branch 

 of horticulture exacts a greater amount of intelligence, of care- 

 ful and accurate observation, with ability to collate and to com- 

 pare the facts observed, and to deduce practical conclusions from 

 them. The Orchid gardeners of the present day unquestionably 

 possess intelligence ; they have also within their reach educa- 

 tional advantages to which their predecessors were strangers, 

 as to them Educational Codes and School Boards were un- 

 known. The simplest truths are often slow in making their 

 way, and the history of Orchid culture bears painful testimony 

 to this fact as regards the horticultural mind. Will it be so in 

 the immediate future, as it was in the past ? Will the generality 

 of Orchid growers go on in the same groove year after year, 

 performing mechanically rather than intelligently the routine 

 they have learned, and thence perpetuate indefinitely the culture 

 now practised with all its excellences and with all its defects, as 

 their predecessors did that which they had learned till the force 

 of circumstances compelled them to alter it ? Seeing how 

 greatly Orchid culture was retarded from geographical and other 

 important details being disregarded by the Orchid gardeners of 

 the past, will those of to-day still show the same indifference to 

 an elementary knowledge of so important a subject when high- 

 class text books are within their reach ? Will they show too the 



N 2 



