1880. ] 
MANURES FOR ORCHIDS. 
101 
deer, pigeons, barn-door fowls, sheep, and cows 
have been mixed up. House sewage, soapsuds, 
animal excrement, the overflow of closets, if 
properly diluted, are also among the best 
feeders of fruit-trees. Fruit-tree borders, when 
enriched with manure-water, should get enough 
to go right through them, so that every hungry 
root may be fed, and the whole of the inter¬ 
stices of the hungry soil may be filled with 
food. 
Solid top-dressings mostly assume three 
forms—rich loam, sweet manure, and com¬ 
posts—all these of many qualities, but all of 
them resolvable into mixtures compounded of 
certain portions of good soil with various man¬ 
ures added to make it yet richer and better. 
These exert a very marked effect upon roots. 
It seems at times, when from three to four 
inches of such materials are placed over hungry 
roots as if the latter knew by a sort of vital 
telegraphy that the food was nigh them, for 
they at once rise up to meet, or rather to eat 
it. This rising of roots to meet and mingle 
in new top-dressings is one of those curious 
mysteries of vitality that has never been satis¬ 
factorily explained, as far as I am aware. It 
has been termed the power of roots to find the 
larder. But what is that power, and how 
comes it to be exercised apparently before any 
of the contents of the larder have reached the 
roots, to reveal its whereabouts ? The fact, 
however, of the rising of the roots, when new 
food is placed over them, is of the greatest 
cultural importance, and though it may not 
explain the philosophy of top-dressing, it does 
prove in the most conclusive way, its immense 
utility. 
But of course the plant-food, or solid dress¬ 
ing, being soluble, also finds its way to the 
roots by being washed down to them by the 
rains. Thus the food is slowly distributed 
through all portions of the border, so that 
ultimately the roots reap all the benefit from 
the food applied. And this gradual distri¬ 
bution has been held to be a main advantage 
of solid over liquid dressings—in fact, both 
may be best, according to circumstances. And 
if liquid dressings are speedily used up, nothing 
is easier than their repetition. So that, on 
the whole, where the trees stand in need of 
much artificial food, liquid top-dressings are 
the best. 
As to the necessity for feeding the roots 
well, it is only needful to glance at the 
enormous strain put on Wall trees, to feel that 
they must indeed be well fed to sustain it. 
The hot bricks behind them, the enormous 
evaporation from their wide spread of leaves, 
and the heavy crops of fruit, all strain and 
try the energies of the trees to the uttermost. 
It is, therefore, essential that the roots should 
never lack either food or water, if the health 
and strength of the trees are to be preserved in¬ 
tact, and top-dressing such as herein described 
affords about the simplest means of furnishing 
them with both.—D. T. Fish, HardwicJce. 
MANURES FOR ORCHIDS. 
N this somewhat novel topic a very 
interesting chapter appears in M. de 
Puydt’s elegant and instructive volume, 
recently noticed in our pages. The following 
is a condensed translation of his remarks :— 
Everybody knows that a plant wears out 
the soil in which it lives; for having to extract 
therefrom certain elements necessary for its 
development, it exhausts the supply, and if 
this is not replaced, the plant cannot fail to 
waste, and sooner or later to disappear. Nature 
or art must therefore again supply these neces¬ 
sary elements—which fact practically involves 
recourse to the use of manure. This refers to 
plants in general. Are the orchids, especially 
the epiphytal kinds which live without touch¬ 
ing the ground, and which are reputed to ask 
nothing, or almost nothing, from the soil, an 
exception to the general rule ? Do not these, 
which grow in or on the soil, or on the rocks, 
need to assimilate to themselves certain mineral 
or organic substances ? Must not the epiphytes 
find in the atmosphere which surrounds them, 
certain gases which are particularly useful to 
them ? Does not the decomposition of the 
mosses in which their roots creep furnish them, 
with food ? The waters of the sky, the dust, 
all that floats in the air, do they not bring to 
them a sufficient quantity of plastic elements, 
even in the most aerial station ? 
We may well believe that it is so, since 
nothing is made out of nothing. Besides, 
experience has proved that Orchids, even 
epiphytes, do not deviate from Nature’s general 
plan, but live in much the same way as other 
plants. Therefore, where assimilable matters 
are insufficient in quantity, it must be possible 
and essential to supply them by artificial 
means. 
Long since, many English cultivators, 
assimilating the treatment of terrestrial Orchids 
in this respect to that of other hardy plants, 
have mixed in the compost in which they plant 
