I try to do my little part, as occasion serves, in
correcting this popular error, and spreading a knowledge of the facts.
It is no less than a duty. If every human being should do what he can to
promote the general happiness, it would be downright wicked to leave
one's fellow-men under the influence of hallucinations that debar them
from the most charming of quiet pleasures. I suspect also that the
misapprehension of the public is largely due to the conduct of experts
in the past. It was a rule with growers formerly, avowed among
themselves, to keep their little secrets. When Mr. B.S. Williams
published the first edition of his excellent book forty years ago, he
fluttered his colleagues sadly. The plain truth is that no class of
plant can be cultivated so easily, as none are so certain to repay the
trouble, as the Cool Orchids.
Nearly all the genera of this enormous family have species which grow in
a temperate climate, if not in the temperate zone. At this moment, in
fact, I recall but two exceptions, Vanda and Phaloenopsis. Many more
there are, of course--half a dozen have occurred to me while I wrote the
last six words--but in the small space at command I must cling to
generalities. We have at least a hundred genera which will flourish
anywhere if the frost be excluded; and as for species, a list of two
thousand would not exhaust them probably. But a reasonable man may
content himself with the great classes of Odontoglossum, Oncidium,
Cypripedium, and Lycaste; among the varieties of these, which no one has
ventured to calculate perhaps, he may spend a happy existence.
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