TIIE FLORIST. 21 



true, that if a person will not make up his mind to act upon the right 

 system when he knows it, I cannot recommend him to keep plants 

 in-doors, many or few, unless for the wholesome discipline of dis- 

 appointment. 



Now I believe, sir, you will agree with me, that the right system 

 for plants, as for children, is the natural system ; and that nostrums, 

 and secrets, and tricks, are, for the most part, not only pernicious but 

 silly. As a general rule, and under similar circumstances, what will 

 grow a good cabbage will grow a good Pelargonium or Fuchsia. 

 And that the apparent departures from this rule are only examples 

 of it, and depend on common-sense reasons drawn from the nature 

 or the original climate of the species of plant. 



And the natural system may be comprised under two heads : 

 1, not to let your plants suffer by neglect ; 2, nor to make them 

 suffer by interference. If many people let them dwindle or die by 

 forgetting to water them at proper times, or to shelter them from 

 excess of sun or of cold, others, not less numerous, think their 

 flowers can never be thriving unless themselves are doing something 

 to make them thrive. And so they bring them to their end, or to 

 pale, sickly, scraggy things on stilts, that can never repay their 

 owner for the trouble of rearing them. 



The application of this system to the culture of the Pelargonium 

 is somewhat hazardous of the charge of presumption in such a person 

 as myself, because I suppose you have already given directions for 

 that in some of the numbers of The Florist I have been so unfortunate 

 as not to see ; and any thing I were to say on the subject that you 

 have already said would be superfluous, and what might differ from 

 your instructions, I am persuaded would be erroneous. Only I would 

 repeat, that any person who will use common sense and common 

 care may succeed in the culture of any of our ordinary fancy flowers. 

 Of these, by much the most useful for a window, and which I 

 expect will always retain its place in this respect, is the Pelargonium ; 

 and, as I have no room to spare, I confine myself to this. You will 

 believe I have no spare room when I tell you that I am a curate, with 

 a family of eight grown-up persons, in latitude 53° 29' 30" on the 

 Greenwich meridian, in an agricultural village that has no house in 

 it larger than a cottage, and mine is no way remarkable among its 

 fellows, of which it is far from being the largest. Yet, without any 

 other convenience than a cottage-window, I grow, in very creditable 

 condition, about thirty varieties (a plant of each) of the best Pelar- 

 goniums : enough to make my room a blaze of beauty during the 

 whole blooming season. 



Now, on the supposition that my thirty plants are established 

 in their pots, and hardened afterwards in the open air, and that it 

 is time to bring them in-doors (this year it was on or about old 

 Michaelmas-day I housed them), I will tell you where I put them, 

 and how I treat them when there. 



I have no south or south-east window in the house : the aspect 

 is south-west; but there is a small room in the front, of which, as it 

 is my dressing-room, I can appropriate the whole window to my 



