230 ON SOWING THE SEEDS OF EXOTIC PLANTS. 



the adjacent plants, by tending to increase the general damp of the 

 house. 



When first housed, if the weather prove clear, they must be shaded 

 for two or three hours at mid-day ; but this practice must not be fol- 

 lowed too closely, as the influence of the sun is but seldom too power- 

 ful for them at this season, and during the winter months the more 

 sun they receive the better : it is also necessary to be particular in 

 observing that no slugs, snails, or any other insect, harbour about 

 them, as before mentioned ; otherwise, they may perhaps destroy all 

 the hopes of the season in one night ; which is to them, as well as 

 to most other insects and animals of prey, a convenient time for their 

 depredations. 



By a careful attention to the above rules, adapting them as place- 

 time, or circumstance will permit, one may expect in the ensuing 

 spring to see their remaining seeds of last season's sowing bea;in to 

 vegetate very fast ; that is, such of them as still have the germ of life 

 sound, which can at any time be easily ascertained. Thev will, when 

 grown to a proper size, require to be parted, and potted separately, 

 in the manner I have before directed ; but, as it is there noticed, they 

 must not be permitted. to grow too large before this operation is per- 

 formed, on account of the roots being liable to interweave with each 

 other, and by that means render it more difficult to be well executed ; 

 besides, it may be injurious in another manner, by occasioning the 

 plants unavoidably to harbour damps, slugs. &c, the evil tendencv of 

 which has been already, I presume, sufficiently explained. 



There is one thing necessary to be remarked before I have done 

 with this article, which is, that those seeds received from New South 

 Wales, in general, as well as many others of the South Sea Islands, 

 and also several, particularly of the larger sorts, from the interior 

 parts of the Cape of Good Hope, from the warmer countries of 

 America, and, in short, any of the climes in, or approaching the same 

 latitudes, although the plants when grown will flourish and come to 

 perfection in the greenhouse, yet the seeds will require the aid of a 

 hotbed when first sown to set them in vegetation, and until thev are 

 parted and established in their separate pots, then to be hardened by 

 degrees to the open air ; from which time they may be treated as 

 directed for the more hardy and common sorts of seedlings. 



