could suggest. But when it was opened, six or eight years ago, not a
Phaloenopsis of all the many varieties would grow in it; after vain
efforts, Mr. Thiselton Dyer was obliged to seek another use for the
building, which is now employed to show plants in flower. Sir Trevor
Lawrence tells how he laid out six hundred pounds for the same object
with the same result. And yet one may safely reckon that this orchid
does admirably in nine well-managed stoves out of ten, and fairly in
nineteen out of twenty. Nevertheless, it is a maxim with growers that
Phaloenopsis should never be transferred from a situation where they are
doing well. Their hooks are sacred as that on which Horace suspended his
lyre. Nor could a reasonable man think this fancy extravagant, seeing
the evidence beyond dispute which warns us that their health is governed
by circumstances more delicate than we can analyze at present.

It would be wrong to leave the impression that orchid culture is
actually as facile as market gardening, but we may say that the
eccentricities of Phaloenopsis and the rest have no more practical
importance for the class I would persuade than have the terrors of the
deep for a Thames water-man. How many thousand householders about this
city have a "bit of glass" devoted to geraniums and fuchsias and the
like! They started with more ambitious views, but successive
disappointments have taught modesty, if not despair. The poor man now
contents himself with anything that will keep tolerably green and show
some spindling flower. The fact is, that hardy plants under glass
demand skilful treatment--all their surroundings are unnatural, and with
insect pest on one hand, mildew on the other, an amateur stands betwixt
the devil and the deep sea. Under those circumstances common plants
become really capricious--that is, being ruled by no principles easy to
grasp and immutable in operation, their discomfort shows itself in
perplexing forms. But such species of orchids as a poor man would think