Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/375

Rh few years, and are sold at reasonable prices; and the business of dealing in them returns little profit unless some of the rarer varieties are on the list.

While it is difficult and dangerous to go to their native haunts for orchids, it is not much more easy to possess the rarer varieties in cultivation; for, while the care of adult plants is comparatively



easy, the raising of the seedlings is attended for many years with almost insurmountable difficulties. But cultivators have become possessed with the idea that it would be well to imitate with species selected for their beauty and good forms the accidental hybridizations of the forests. Many have tried; a few have succeeded. One of the first among these was M. Bleu, General Secretary of the French Horticultural Society. He cross-fertilized, sowed the seeds, and raised young plants. To appreciate the difficulties of these operations, they must be followed out. In the first place, the seeds are so fine that they can not be seen without a strong glass; they are sown on the bark of trees or in chopped moss; and they are transplanted when the plants are so small that the work has to be done by the aid of a magnifier. These material difficulties are still as nothing compared with the care that has to be given the nurslings to secure a good development of them. The cultivator may consider himself fortunate if he gets a few dozen good plants out of several thousand seedlings.

Orchids in all their varieties of aspect and form have very