TEMPERATURE AND MOISTUKE. 61 



rose watering pots, giving the plants water sparingly, or 

 otherwise, as required. But as spring opens, we go at 

 the operation more expeditiously, using a one and a half 

 inch hose, through which the water is forced by a force 

 pump, or through pressure from the city water works. To 

 the end of the hose is attached a heavy sprinkler. In all 

 districts where there is no hydrant- water, the force pump 

 makes a good substitute, though, of course, entailing 

 double work. Most of our large florists, in the vicinity 

 of New York, who are out of the range of city water 

 works, use windmills to raise the water from wells to ele- 

 vated tanks, so as to get the necessary pressure, and thus 

 do away with the necessity of the force pump. When 

 practicable, we prefer to water or syringe plants early in 

 the forenoon (say from 9 to 11 A. M.), although it is by 

 no means imperative to do so. 



Two rules are laid down by nearly all writers that I 

 have read on floriculture, in reference to the water to be 

 used for plants ; one, that it must be rain, or, at least, 

 " soft" water ; the other, that the water should be of the 

 same temperature as the atmosphere in which the plants 

 are growing. 



To both these dogmas, I beg to respectfully enter my 

 protest. Such dogmas are handed down from one to 

 another, without one in a hundred of those who hold 

 them, having either the opportunity or inclination to test 

 their truth by experiment. My greenhouses, at Jersey 

 City, for a dozen years, were entirely watered from a deep 

 well of hard water, winter and summer, which might 

 average in temperature forty degrees ; most of my 

 greenhouses, now on Jersey City Heights, were watered 

 from cisterns inside the greenhouses, from rain-water 

 caught by the roof, for some ten years, and for" the past 

 dozen years we have used the city water, yet we have never 

 been able to see that our plants have been in any way dif- 

 ferent under these three different conditions of watering. 



