266 PEACTICAL GARDENING. 



tender plant so treated will stand our climate ; but, indepen- 

 dently of their failing the fii'st trying winter, of which they 

 never inform us, they never in their iustructions tell us any 

 one thing that changes the plant. They tell us, first, to drain 

 the ground, for that naturally warms it ; next, to use certaiu 

 compost naturally warmer in itself than the common ground 

 of a damp cold site. Then it must be in a particular situation, 

 sheltered from the north and east winds, and when we have 

 done all this, we are to iusert our plant. This is all very 

 well, but what have they done in all this? Why, they have 

 prepared a warmer situation, and more genial treatment, to 

 prevent the plant from feeUng the usual climate ; they can 

 no more change the natui-e of the plant itself than they can 

 change the leopard's spots. They tell us there was a "time 

 when the Aucuba japonica was a stove plant, then a green- 

 house plant, and now a hardy plant, that is, — that it has been 

 acclimated ; but there is a grand mistake in this. The Aucuba 

 japonica never was a stove plant ; it was always as hardy as it 

 is in the present day. It was totally unknown as to consti- 

 tution ; it was ignorantly placed in a stove ; some gardener, 

 more fond of experiment, found it was not tender, and tried 

 the greenhouse ; there it did better ; and some other, or, 

 perhaps, the same, then tried it out of doors, and found it 

 flourished better still, and that it stood a very hard frost j but 

 whoever did this, took the credit of a discovery, that of having 

 changed the constitution of the plant. Then, again, some of 

 the writers on the subject generally tell us that the myrtle 

 has been acclimated in the Isle of Wight, on the Hampshire 

 coast, and in Devonshire, because it may be seen growing on 

 the fronts of houses, and on walls, as freely as we grow the 

 common jasmine or the China rose ; but the mistake here is, 

 that the climate in these places is. not so trying to the plants 

 as the climate inland. The situation is warmer in the winter 

 months ; the changes are not so great : it is not that the 

 plants are a jot more hardy than they were when imported. 

 Acclimating plants, therefore, is a palpable fallacy; and we 

 are half inclined to be angry with men professing to be 

 gardeners, who write such nonsense. But changes are inimical 

 to plants. If there were no frost at all, and a plant were 

 removed from the stove at 80° of heat, to the open air at 35°, 

 it would greatly suffer. The British oak, sown in the stove, 

 brought up in the stove, and at one year old brought into the 



