•April ;o, 1830. ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER 
295 
concerned, leaving each with only the asual movement of its own 
warmer and cooler air. 
I cannot admit outside air close to my pipes, and am inclined to 
doubt whether all the air admitted so does really get warmed at all 
er. passing them. Air is a bad conductor, and only the thin stream 
in imyact for a moment with the pipes may carry much warmth 
>with it. A quantity may pass in without being influenced at all, 
just as it has been found that the centre of a stream of people in a 
departing congregation were too imperfectly affected by a collection 
at the doors, the boxes having small effect beyond the thin current 
•of -humanity impinging on them. Hence the old plan, that 
admitted of so much passing on untouched, has given place to the 
Aappier method that reaches all! However, you will see that it 
18 not fresh air from outside that is in question, but an active 
•circulation of the air within. You will not take it that I suggest 
any substitute for fresh air whenever safe, for I give the Orchids 
all I can. Fresh air is always entering by laps of the glass and 
other narrow avenues, as may be seen by the way in which fine 
particles of dust get in on dusty, windy days. 
My other valued auxiliary for maintaining a kindly and unfail- 
nng moistness of the air simply consists in having natural earth 
■noors to aU the houses. The pathways are made with stones and 
cheers, and faced with sifted coke. There is never any drying up, 
and never any damping down. Enough moisture escapes from the 
■stages to keep the earth floors always damp. Such a floor is always 
•sweet, and need never be unsightly if it is kept lightly ruffled with 
n ral^e. It is liable to no extremes of condition, and I think it is 
more sweet and healthy for the plants than any hard, perhaps even 
ornamental flooring of the house that seems to grow nothing well 
'because it has cost too much. 
The greater part of my Orchids I have grown on from newly 
amported plants, and many were half established but unflowered. 
Same I bought in bloom, especially while at certain times we were 
in lack of a succession of species in flower. Now, however, there, 
are no flowerless intervals in all the year among the Orchids ; but 
•even if there were, there is abundant interest in watching what 
these curious plants are doing in their wonderful habits of life and 
growth. It may readily be imagined that there is a powerful 
•charna—a serene sense of security to the tremulous beginner—in 
reposing his early trust upon “ established Orchids.” It is 
beginning where someone else has left off, and he will stand upon 
an assured foundation from the first! The period of convalescence 
as safely passed. He has had no anxious watching by the sick bed¬ 
side ; no sad burden of his dead to carry forth. Perhaps flowering 
^strength is again attained. In all probability there is no danger 
•now from the undetected eggs, or the ever execrable larvae of 
unclean horrors in tropical insect life ; and yet, as the boy said 
•who strove to express himself in language beyond his strength, he 
may find he has “ planted his foot on vice versa." For if the 
established Orchid has already been flowered in this country, there 
as another and a sadder light in which it may be viewed. Coming 
with a character as a high type in a variable species, it would of 
course come with a correspondingly high price, which, however, 
might or might not be of consequence ; but in absence of these 
modest assurances of worth, it may be nothing but “ a cull ”—a cast- 
•out from some collection more rich without it. For the amateur 
orchidist soon grows to be so far humanised in this as in other 
^Jursuits, as to freely set price upon and part with that, which he 
ihag discerned to be inferior, and in so doing to wish he had invested 
an fewer Orchids, where variation in type makes so much difference 
in -worth and beauty. I would distrust, for any high quality, the 
plant that has been silently proved, and comes, unwept for and 
•unsung, to the auction room “ without reserve.” The advantage of 
<the newly imported or half-established plant is that you may have 
2ia,ppened to select a fine type of the flower, while from among 
■plants in a more advanced condition the probability may be gone. 
Okciiids from Seed. 
•I very soon had yearnings to possess seedling Orchids of my 
own raising, and if only this branch of Orchid culture could be 
brought more within the range of practical horticulture, what 
beauties past imagining would be revealed, and how, from what we 
have seen of hybrid Orchids, we long for more ! Of the two im¬ 
portant points, getting the seed and getting it to grow, the first is 
easy compared with the second. I have a few hybrid seedlings of 
my own, but I suppose they hardly represent one in many thou¬ 
sands of seed sown. They appeared in an inverse ratio to the 
pains I took to-sowthem. After dusting them over several likely and 
careful contrivances for raising them, the only seeds that grew 
were some that I had carelessly blown about upon any basket or 
block or pot that would save wasting the remainder of a pod of 
seed. No seedling from a fine pod of Cattleya citrina X C. Mossise, 
which I sowed among the parent plants, has appeared within a 
year, and I do mot know whether it is hopeless. Seen through a 
microscope the seed seemed well developed, and so did that of 
Phalaenopsis Schilleriana X P. araibilis, but it did not grow. I 
have never removed the pollen masses from the flower of any seed 
parent, thinking that, while secure in the capsule, there will be less 
danger of its own pollen accidentally touching the stigmatic 
surface. 
There is a curious impression that whatever a flower of Zygo- 
petalum Mackayi is crossed with, the seed will produce simply 
Zygopetalum Mackayi! I have some seedlings of which this Zygo- 
petalum is the seed parent, and the male parents were Epidendrum 
ciliare and Oncidium unguiculatum. The seedlings are growing 
finely, and I must say they have at present a likeness to their 
mother. Yet I cannot think the seed parent received any influence 
from its own pollen, as I did not displace it in fertilising the pods, 
nor were any of the capsules of any of the flowers on this spike 
disturbed, neither was there any other plant of the kind in bloom 
on which the pollen might have been set free. Having the oppor¬ 
tunity I fertilised Odontoglossum Rossi majus with Zygopetalum 
Mackayi (!), and there is a huge pod. Supposing this seed should 
grow, it will be interesting to see if the Zygopetalum influence 
can really turn this seed into Zygopetalum when it has had no 
maternal share in producing it. If that is so, there must be more 
strange things in Orchids than were ever dreamed of in my poor 
philosophy. 
I have other Orchid pods of interest, but it remains to be 
seen whether anything will grow out of them. Among the best 
are two fine ones on Vanda Sanderiana X Vanda coerulea. of which 
I should greatly like to see the seedlings, but have had no experi¬ 
ence with Vanda seed. Others are Oncidium Papilio majus X 0. 
Lanceanum, and Cattleya Trianse X Brassavola glauca, a large night- 
scented flower, of a beautiful moonlight shade of white, and a 
spearlike dash of crimson on base of lip. I have not been able yet 
to use my plant of Brassavola (Lfeliaj Digbyana as a parent. 
Seed-bearing is often a very perceptible strain upon the plant, 
or that lead of it which bears it. A Phalaenopsis carrying 
a large pod never made a new leaf for two years afterwards, 
though it lost none. The seed-bearing lead on Cattleya citrina 
did not break the year after, though it grew again the season after 
that; but on Vanda Sanderiana the pods have had no visible effect 
on the subsequent growth of the plants. 
The earliest symptom of fertilisation is the swelling of the 
column, and it is not until the turgescence of the rostellum at the 
head of it that the capsule confining the pollen masses is displaced, 
too late for them to interfere. In many cases the flower dies soon 
afterwards, but in Phalajnopsis Luddemanniana the flower was per¬ 
sistent, thickening in all its parts, changing to a reddish green, and 
living till the pod was ripe. Zygopetalum Mackayi lost its lip, but 
the sepals and petals, much thickened, remained upon the pod. 
Oncidium Papilio and Vanda Sanderiana have retained the flower 
distinctly, but in a dry brown state. 
(To be con'.inued.) 
NOTES 0 ^ FRUIT TREES—APPLES. 
( Continued from page 276. j 
My second point is that our inability (and it is a demonstrated 
fact) to compete with American Apples in the markets is the result 
of indiscriminately planting trees in locations unsuited to their 
producing fruit of the essential sizs, colour, quality, and crop to 
satisfy the buyer, and return a fair per-centage of profit to the 
grower. The orchards of Nova Scotia, Maine, Massachusetts, 
Connecticut, New York, and other of the north-eastern States of 
America are, as results of a survey of the map, more favourably 
located than those of the British islands. The great Apple pro¬ 
ducing districts of America lie between 41° and 4G° north latitude, 
those of England and Wales are situated between 50° and 54°north 
latitude. London in latitude 51°32' N. has a mean annual temperature 
of 50T°, mean summer temperature 63’8°, and mean winter tempera¬ 
ture of 37'3°, with an animal rainfall of 21 inches. New York 
10° further south, or in latitude 41° 6' N., has a mean annual tem¬ 
perature of 51'7°, mean summer temperature 72'3°, and mean 
winter temperature of 314°, the annual rainfall being 36 inches. 
England, by virtue of the Gulf Stream or ocean current as shown 
by the “ temperature chait,” is singularly favoured whereby it is 
placed in the southern part of the north temperate zone, whilst 
the Apple producing districts of America are placed in the northern. 
The British Isles lie in the southern with an annual isotherm of 
68° on its southern limit, and 37° isotherm of the coldest months 
on the northern, whilst the limit of the other or north part of the 
temperate zone has an annual isotherm of 32°. The southern part 
of the temperate zone in which England is located has a mean 
annual temperature of 52)^°, whilst the northern part of the tern- 
