HORTICULTURAL JOURNAL. 59 
perly the value of the processes of culture which are recommended, and to 
apply them judiciously or to modify them according to circumstances, it is 
necessary to represent as well as possible the privileged countries in which 
they grow ; to see them at least in thought, in their natural situations and 
in the general and special conditions of life for which the Creator has 
endowed them with an especial organization. Horticulture is no longer a 
routine, we cannot proceed at hazard and grope along ; it is a science whose 
laws are those of nature itself, and the study of nature is an essential con- 
dition of success in it. 
We will try to abridge for our readers these long and often difficult 
researches, in relating the ideas scattered through the best accounts of 
voyages, and those which we gathered from the conversations of some of 
the distinguished men whom we have quoted above. 
I. The Country of Orchids. 
The family of the Orchidese is one of the largest and widest spread which 
our globe contains. Except in those desolate regions where winter rages 
almost without intermission, there is scarcely a country, isolated though it 
may be, which does not spontaneously produce some interesting individuals 
of this great family. However, whatever may be the merit of many Orchids 
of northern regions, it is evident that in proceeding from the north to the 
south, in going from the frozen to the temperate zone, and thence to the 
intertropical countries, the beauty, size and showiness of the species, taken 
all together, increases, as does their number, with temperature of places, and 
especially with the intensity of the light and the atmospheric humidity. 
Another phenomenon is produced as we approach the warmest portion of 
the globe, at some degrees north or south of the tropics ; that far, the 
Orchids, following the most general law of vegetation, implant themselves 
in the ground and there collect their nourishment, under some special 
conditions, however, but hardly have they attained the fruitful regions, 
which a vertical sun floods with light and heat, than they quit, for the most 
part, their terrestial habitatioits, and disdaining to creep, fix themselves on 
living or dead trees, and suspend themselves by lining the slits of the bark 
with their roots, and thus go through all the phases of their life without 
touching the earth, without borrowing anything from it, collecting from the 
air which surrounds them, from the moisture with which it is impregnated, 
without doubt also from the gas which the great work of decomposition and 
assimilation in virgin forests disengages, the elements of that vegetation 
