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fessional horticulturists very frequently (an objection from the appar- 

 ent want of sympathy with those who do not possess the reserve 

 forces of a large conservatory), and also because the hsts of plants 

 offered are not to be easily obtained in this country. Even a work 

 which has lately been published in this city on parlor and garden 

 flowei-s, contains very meagre information of any use to the amateur. 



It is this interest which is now felt in these beautiful miniature con- 

 servatories, which leads me to hope that climatic and physiological 

 experiments may be made of use to botanists. It may seem that a 

 large hothouse would serve every purpose, but it is not so. Every 

 gardener knows that the Lycopodium ccesium will not attain its deep- 

 est blue color in more than one out of ten hothouses, while, in the par- 

 lor, exposed beneath the small glass of a fernery, it becomes deeply 

 casrulean. Plants which with difficulty propagate by cuttings in the 

 greenhouse, can be struck in any properly constructed Wardian Case. 

 I have myself no hothouse, and live in a house where the furnace heat 

 and gas are fatal to the blossoms of even so hardy a house plant as the 

 common Abutilon, yet I can grow the most delicate ferns, flower 

 Camellias, strike cuttings of all bedding plants which can be grown 

 in that way, and be comparatively free from the damping off so com- 

 mon on the best cutting bench. 



The facilities for regulating the heat and the moisture, nay, even the 

 kind of air our plants shall breathe, are very great. A AVardian Case 

 may be filled with carbonic acid gas if we wish to try its effects on dif- 

 ferent ferns or even other plants, and the plants wholly unchanged in 

 their relations to heat and moisture and light, a thing impossible in the 

 clumsily contrived chemical exjDeriments of other days. In this very 

 room might we have cases with climates variable at will to an extent 

 only Hmited by the duration of our sunlight. 



Although at present warmer temperatures are produced, yet, by a 

 modification of the case which I will describe, arctic or sub-arctic re- 

 gions may be formed for the growth and inspection of alpine vegeta- 

 tion. I wish I could offer more than mere suggestions ; my own ex- 

 periments hardly extend the ground of our knowledge at all, and can 

 only be considered in confirmation perhaps of older observations. 



The Wardian Case in its original form was almost air-tight, a con- 

 struction which can only be endured for a time by ferns and the lower 

 forms of cryptogamic vegetation. Next after the necessary ventila- 

 tion came the decided improvement of artificial heat, used in the so- 

 called Waltonian Case. And beyond this no improvement has been 

 made, save in the more beautiful form of the little glass palaces. 



The essential qualities of a good Wardian Case are these : permea- 

 bility to light, ventilation and drainage. Size and shape must depend 

 on the class of experiments to be tried. An aquarium makes a very 



