WINDOW GARDENING. 51 



of its dry heat only ; the little, gas escaping from our best 

 furnaces is not sufficient to affect plants injuriously. And 

 while speaking of gas, if possible avoid the use of gas 

 light in the room ; the unconsumed gas, always given off, is 

 fatal to delicate plants, and hurtful to the most hardy. If 

 you must use gas in the room, arrange glass doors to shut 

 off your plants from the room, or give up window plants, 

 and confine yourself to growth in Wardian cases. If a 

 furnace is your only means of heating, provide for sufficient 

 moisture by constant evaporation. Another objection to a 

 furnace is, that it keeps the room too warm for a healthy 

 growth of the plants. 



The cause of so many window plants showing long, 

 white, leafless stalks, with a tuft of leaves on the end, is, 

 too great heat and too little light. Proportion the two, and 

 you obtain a short, stocky, healthy growth. In rooms, 

 this proportion is always unequal. In winter, there are 

 eight hours of sun to sixteen of darkness; we keep the 

 plant at a temperature of sixty to seventy degrees all the 

 twenty-four. In a green-house, on the contrary, the tem- 

 perature falls to forty degrees at night, rising, by the hea* 

 of the sun, by day, to a maximum of seventy. 



