262 
HISTORY, INTRODUCTION, NATURAL HABITATS, AND 
CULTIVATION OF ORCHIDEOUS EPIPHYTES, 
BY DR. BINDLEY. 
EXTRACTED FROM THE HORTICULTURAL TRANSACTIONS, VOL. I. PART I., NEW SERIES. 
Botanists were aware, at a very early period of the history of science, of the 
existence in tropical countries, of a race of plants found growing upon the trunks of 
trees, very different from anything wild in Europe ; and not less remarkable for 
their beauty or fragrance, than for the extremely singular structure of their flowers. 
The figure of coatzonte coxoahitt, by Hernandez, a nearly related species of 
which has been since described by Humboldt, under the name of Anguloa superba, 
the plates of Plumier, of Rumpliius and Rheede, the drawings of the Chinese, and 
the reports of travellers, had all contributed to excite a lively desire in the minds of 
the collectors of rare or curious plants, to add these wonders of the tropical forest 
to the number of objects compelled to submit to the skill of the cultivator. 
It does not, however, appear that any success attended the first attempts to 
introduce these plants to Europe ; or if they reached this country, they were 
speedily lost. 
The Vanilla seems to have been the first that became established in the hot- 
houses of England, and to have been in fact the only kind that was known to 
Miller. According to the Hortus Kewensis, two or three and twenty species only 
had become fixed at Kew during the last ten years of the last century, and it is 
certain, that from this period, up to the establishment of the Society's garden at 
Chiswick, the number had increased but very slowly. 
A stimulus had indeed been given to the pursuit by Mr. Cattley, but the single 
efforts of that gentleman had not been sufficient to produce any considerable accession 
to the number of species in cultivation, although they contributed, in an important 
degree, to improve the then existing methods of treating them. It would seem that 
not more than twelve or fourteen species had been added to the garden at Kew, in 
the first thirteen years of the present century, and such bad success had attended 
their cultivation upon the continent, that only nineteen species were mentioned, in 
1822, in Professor Link’s Catalogue of the garden at Berlin, one of the richest in 
Europe. 
It was supposed that this very remarkable instance of want of success, in the 
preservation of plants of such universal interest, was due to some peculiar difficulty 
in their cultivation, and it was resolved that an attempt should be made in the 
garden of the society, to overcome it. A corresponding feeling elsewhere seems to 
have been called forth about the same time, and probably by the society’s example ; 
so that it has come to pass, that, not to mention the Chiswick garden, private esta- 
