nly, 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
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 f