280 A HISTORY OF GARDENING IN ENGLAND 
them ; the camp of the explorers was moved on week by week as 
they exhausted the plants in their neighbourhood. 1 The sight 
of this glorious wealth of flowers, which has gladdened many 
orchid-hunters, will be denied to future generations, if the 
searchers are not more moderate in their demands on the 
virgin forests of the Old and New World. 
The first tropical orchid which flowered in this country was 
a specimen of Bletia verecunda, which was sent from Providence 
Island, one of the Bahamas, in 1731, to Peter Collinson. 2 In 
Miller’s Dictionary two or three tropical orchids are mentioned, 
and some were grown by him at Chelsea. Pie says of the 
Vanilla, which was sent to him “ from Carthagena in New 
Spain,” that “ this plant flowered in the Chelsea Garden, but, 
wanting its proper support, it lived but one year.” In 1778 
Dr. John Fothergill brought home two species from China, one 
of which, Phaius grandifolius, flowered soon after in the stove 
of his niece, Mrs. Hird, at Apperley Bridge, in Yorkshire. In 
1787 Epidendrum cochleatum flowered at the Royal Gardens, 
Kew, 3 and Epidendrum fragrans the following year. Soon 
after the beginning of this century several species were cul¬ 
tivated for sale by the Loddiges at Hackney, and this firm 
held for many years a conspicuous place among orchid 
growers. As early as 1812 they grew a plant of Oncidium 
bifolium , which was brought from Monte Video, and about 
the same year the first of the Vandas, Aerides, and Dendro- 
biums were sent from India by Dr. Roxburgh. Although 
plants of many orchids were coming to this country during 
the first thirty years of this century, so little was known of 
their native places and their conditions of life that their 
cultivation was extremely difficult, and orchid growers met 
with constant failures. A house was set apart for them at 
Kew, and Lindley also, at the Horticultural Society, by careful 
study of their habits, tried to discover the right treatment. 
One of the earliest private orchid-houses was that of the Earl 
Fitzwilliam, at Wentworth Woodhouse, the genus Miltonia 
1 Travels and Adventures of an Orchid-Hunter, by Albert Millican, 
1891. 
2 W. B. Hemsley, Gardener’s Chronicle, 1887. 
3 A Manual of Orchidaceous Plants, Part X. By James Veitch and 
Sons, 1894. 
