ACCLIMATING AN ERROR. 267 



open air in a frost of only one degree, would suffer exceed- 

 ingly, if it were not killed outright ; so that, if any one 

 possesses a plant usually in a stove, and has reason to think 

 it hardy, it ought not to be brought out at once ; but it 

 should be first removed to the greenhouse, and if it did well 

 there for a reasonable time, it might in the summer be turned 

 out into the open air, and it would be let down by degrees to 

 the ordinary chmate, and the winter ^vould fairly decide its 

 fate ; whereas, if brought at once from 80° to 36°, not to 

 say frost, it would, like our hardy British oak, suffer, if not 

 die, though really a hardy subject. Again, there are some 

 rhododendrons said to be hardy ; but how should they be 

 treated? If we buy the R campanulatum in a pot, and 

 keep it in a greenhouse it will make new wood, and set off in 

 growth long before it would move in the open air. Let it be 

 turned out in March for experiment^ and if there were a 

 smart frost, every young shoot would be killed, and then, 

 forsooth, it would be set down as tender ; but turn it out in 

 the autumn, when at rest, and then it would not move untU 

 it was capable of bearing the seasonable weather : not but 

 that the effects of a mild winter and spring might be a 

 premature growth, and that it might suffer from the April 

 and May frosts, which are often fatal to our fruit-trees. How 

 many times have we known the walnut-tree, of the hardiness 

 of which no one doubts, lose all its first shoots and the crop 

 by a late frost? yet it would not on that account be set down 

 as tender ; but if the winter were to be ever so severe, and 

 last long beyond its usual period, without any change from 

 hard frost until it broke up altogether, the walnut would be 

 safe, and that simply because it had not been excited into 

 premature groAvth. 



In our remarks on the protection of subjects out of doors, 

 we have .shown how fatal sudden changes are to many plants ; 

 and, moreover, we have suggested the best means of prevent^ 

 ing mischief by keeping off the sun from frozen plants ; for 

 bad as is the change from warmth to frost, it is not so fatal as 

 from frost to heat, a sudden thaw being far more fatal than 

 a sudden frost. All we can admit, therefore, in the way of 

 acclimating, is this : it is possible to change the climate of a 

 place to suit a plant, but it is impossible to change the con- 

 stitution of a plant to suit a place ; and all the instructions, 

 even from Sir Joseph Paxton, who is upon some matters 



