264 
CULTIVATION OF ORCHIDEOUS EPIPHYTES. 
Shade seems essential to them, their natural situation being in deep forests, or 
among branches of growing trees. In Brazil they exclusively occupy damp woods, 
and rich valleys among vegetation of the most luxuriant description, by which 
they are embowered. In Nepal, according to Dr. Wallich, they grow in company 
with ferns, and the thicker the forest, the more stately the trees ; the richer and 
blacker the natural soil, the more profuse the orchideae and ferns upon them. There 
they flourish by the sides of dropping springs, in deep shady recesses, in inconceivable 
quantity and with an astonishing degree of luxuriance. 
High temperature and excessive humidity are together the other conditions 
essential to the well-being of these plants. The hottest countries, if dry, and the 
dampest, if cool, are destitute of them, whilst there is no instance of a country both 
hot and damp in which they do not swarm. 
There is perhaps no part of the world in which they more abound than India ; 
in the Malayan Archipelago, the climate of which is intensely hot, the mean tem- 
perature being between 77° and 78°, and damp to saturation, they exist in enormous 
quantities. In Nepal, they are only found upon the sides of the lower mountains, 
where they vegetate amongst clouds and constant showers ; while on the continent of 
India they are almost unknown, their place being occupied by parasitical Loranthi. 
The traveller finds himself in the morning on the dry plains of Hindostan, where 
the mean temperature is 80°, and where all the trees are destitute of Orcliidece, and 
at noon he is at the foot of the first range of Nepalese hills, where every tree teems 
with that class of plants. 
There are, however, places on the continent of India, where they are not less 
numerous than in Nepal ; at the estuaries of the Ganges, the Burhampoota, (Bur- 
mapootra), the Irawaddi, and the rivers of Martaban, they exist in vast quantities, 
but all these stations are exceedingly damp. In the Botanic Garden, Calcutta, they 
grow most vigorously during the rainy seasons, but in the fiercely hot season that 
begins in March, and lasts till the 10th of June, they perish, notwithstanding all 
the care they receive. The humidity of the Isle of France and Madagascar is well 
known, and the temperature of the former has been computed at 80° 4 ' ; here vast 
quantities abound. 
In Africa they are very rare; its sandy deserts and parched atmosphere are 
unfavourable to their growth, notwithstanding the high temperature of that torrid 
region. They are, however, found at Sierra Leone in abundance, where the mean 
temperature is 70 ° 7', but modified by vapours, the existence of which is unfortu- 
nately but too well ascertained. At the Cape of Good Hope they are wholly un- 
known, and although the temperature of the northern parts of the colony is probably 
at least equal to that of the Mauritius, yet the aridity of the region prevents a trace 
of them being seen. 
In America, their favourite stations, according to Humboldt, is in the gorges of 
the Andes of Mexico, New r Grenada, Quito and Peru, where the air is mild and 
humid, and the mean temperature 63° — 07° Fahr. (17° — 19° cent.). In these 
localities they are so abundant, that according to the authors of the Flora Peruviana, 
above 1000 species might be found in Tarma, Huanuco, and Xauxa alone. 
