LEAF-MOULD FOR EXOTICS. 
135 
of luxuriance, without diminishing their production of bloom. And thirdly, 
though so open, and so well adapted to let the water pass away, there is no soil 
that is sooner permeated by moisture, or that gets so thoroughly and efficiently 
wetted by any application of fluid. 
We proceed to speak primarily of its employment in a simple state. The 
growers of terrestrial Orchidaceae, as the species of Bletia, Pkaius, Calanthe^ Szc.^ 
are by no means unanimous in the recommendation of any particular soil ; many 
preferring the heath-mould which they apply to those of the epiphytes which are 
cultivated in pots, and a few choosing rather to give them a loamy earth. 
Undoubtedly, some of the finer kinds have been found to succeed in loam ; but 
there is much danger in the use of this material, on account of its liability to bind 
or to become saturated in the alternations to which it must be exposed. Yet, 
wherever it has been tried, and a perfect drainage has contributed to its success, 
the plants grown in it have invariably been raised to an unusual height of richness 
and splendour ; thereby proving that they need something more nourishing than 
heath-mould, or, at any rate, that a stronger soil greatly improves them. 
By some strange inconsistency, when heath-mould has been used for the same 
kind of plants, instead of being prepared in lumps, and of a fibrous nature, as for 
the epiphytes, it has mostly been reduced considerably, a more sandy sort being 
selected, and scarcely any drainage mingled with it. Passing by this, however, 
the insufficiency of nutriment in heath-mould may be fastened on ; and, as we 
have before shown that loam is not an appropriate material, we come to advocate 
the employment of leaf-mould universally for terrestrial Orchidaceous plants. It 
appears to us to possess every requisite quality for keeping them in health at all 
seasons, and also for making them greatly superior, both in foliage and inflorescence, 
to the condition in which they are generally seen. 
We include, in the preceding observations, the more hardy of the species ; for 
example, the North American Cypripediums, the New Holland kinds, and the 
most interesting of our indigenous species. All the difficulties in managing these 
would, we believe, be at once dissipated, were they to be planted in a well-drained 
border of leaf-mould, in a shady place. 
It allows, too, of much question, whether a portion of the more epiphytal 
species, which are now grown in baskets and pots, filled with heath-mould or 
sphagnum, might not be really benefited by being planted in leaf-soil. The 
thouglit has repeatedly occurred to us, that epiphytes have yet been very little 
more than grown, not cultivated ; and that something might be done to ameliorate 
them to the same extent to which the beautiful shrubs of our greenhouses and 
stoves have been improved. Should this be attempted — and we hope it will — 
there seems no way in which such fine results are likely to be obtained, as by the 
application of leaf-mould instead of heath-soil. And it must be remembered that 
many epiphytes actually locate themselves spontaneously in the cavities of old 
trees, where there is a quantity of decomposed woody matter ; so that, this being 
