124 ICOSANDRIA. 



oy Parkinson^, " and use has been made of it by phy- 

 siologists to shew that plants become inured to a cli- 

 mate different from their own ; but I am informed 

 by a scientific and practical man, whose opinion and 

 experience is founded upon a knowledge of more 

 than seventy years^ that the inference is incorrect. 

 That Clusius first preserved this plant in a stove at 

 Vienna, there can be no doubt 3 but even at this day 

 it is a very common error with nurser)'men, when they 

 receive plants or seeds from a hot country, to suppose 

 that their habit requires a stove j and thus it happens 

 that seeds which come from the East and the West 

 Indies are oftentimes put to grow in our stoves, and 

 cultivated in the same manner for many years, from 

 the supposition that tliey require more than an ordinary 

 degree of heat, till by some accident it is found that 

 they will endure cold, and then it is said that the plant 

 is hardened to our climate. Seeds brought from Can- 

 ton to England are uniformly sown in our Hot-houses, 

 without inquir}^ whether the plants grew wild in the 

 neighbourhood of that city, or under the great wall 

 that divides tliat vast empire from Tartary. The de- 

 gree of cold any plant is found to bear after fifty years 



" John Parkinson was an English botanist, born in 1567. 

 He was an apothecary in London, and eminent in his profes- 

 sion. His garden was well stored with rare plants, and he 

 became botanist to King Charles I. He died about 1C45. 

 Parkinson was the first author who described and figured the 

 subjects of the flower garden. He published in 1640 his *'Thea- 

 frura Botanicum, or Theatre of Plants," folio. 



