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CHAPTER VIII. 



OS HOUSE AND WINDOW GARDENING. 



(BY MR. CHARLES MACKINTOSH.) 



:1K culture of flowering and sweet-scented plants, as orna- 

 ments in human dwellings, has been practiced from sucn 

 remote antiquity that no one can name the date of its 

 origin. House plants are also a kind of ornaments which all the 

 labors of the most refined art can never exceed or even reach ; 

 and hence in the most refined and luxurious states of society, 

 flowers maintain a high place among the leading ornaments ; and 

 the assembly-rooms of beauty and fashion, and the banqueting- 

 halls of the noble and the great, would look tame and barren 

 without those most beautiful and most appropriate decorums. 



Farther, it is one of the great merits of these lovely produc- 

 tions of nature, that thev are for the humble as well as for the 

 high. The humblest window in the most obscure and crowded 

 court of a city may have its flower- pot ; and they who are cut 

 off by occupation or other circumstances from the free range of 

 growing nature, may still command a little vegetable kingdom of 

 their own in a few well-selected and carefully-attended flowers. 



!A species of ornament, which is in its own nature so pleasing 

 and so innocent, which requires far less labor and expense than 

 many other ornaments of very inferior value, and which adapts itself 

 to every imaginable class of society, is surely worthy of the study, 

 the encouragement, and the care of all who seek happiness to 

 themselves, or wish to promote the happiness of others. 



