expense. I am not to lay down principles of cultivation here, but this
must be said: orchids are indifferent to detail. There lies a secret.
Secure the general conditions necessary for their well-doing, and they
will gratefully relieve you of further anxiety; neglect those general
conditions, and no care will reconcile them. The gentleman who reduced
my Cattleya to such straits gave himself vast pains, it is likely,
consulted no end of books, did all they recommend; and now declares that
orchids are unaccountable. It is just the reverse. No living things
follow with such obstinate obedience a few most simple laws; no machine
produces its result more certainly, if one comply with the rules of its
being.

This is shown emphatically by those cases which we do not clearly
understand; I take for example the strangest, as is fitting. Some
irreverent zealots have hailed the Phaloenopsis as Queen of Flowers,
dethroning our venerable rose. I have not to consider the question of
allegiance, but decidedly this is, upon the whole, the most interesting
of all orchids in the cultivator's point of view. For there are some
genera and many species that refuse his attentions more or less
stubbornly--in fact, we do not yet know how to woo them. But the
Phaloenopsis is not among them. It gives no trouble in the great majority
of cases. For myself, I find it grow with the calm complacency of the
cabbage. Yet we are all aware that our success is accidental, in a
measure. The general conditions which it demands are fulfilled,
commonly, in any stove where East Indian plants flourish; but from time
to time we receive a vigorous hint that particular conditions, not
always forthcoming, are exacted by Phaloenopsis. Many legends on this
theme are current; I may cite two, notorious and easily verified. The
authorities at Kew determined to build a special house for the genus,
provided with every comfort which experience or scientific knowledge