38 THE FLOWER GARDEN, 



further water or air admitted. The strangers which 

 we have seen thus transmitted, being chiefly very 

 small portions of succulents and epiphytes, though 

 healthy, have shown no inclination to flourish or 

 blossom in their confinement ; but it must be remem- 

 bered that the temperature on the deck of a ship 

 must be very much lower than what this tribe re- 

 quires, and the quantity of w,ood-work which the 

 cases require to stand the roughness of the voyage, 

 greatly impedes the transmission of light. As soon 

 as the slips are placed in the genial temperature of 

 the orchideous house, they speedily shoot out into 

 health and beauty. 



But while this mode of conveyance answers the 

 purposes of science, a much more beautiful adapta- 

 tion of the same principle is contrived for the bed- 

 room garden of the invalid. Who is there that has 

 not some friend or other confined by chronic disease 

 or lingering decline to a single chamber ? one, we 

 will suppose, who a short while ago was among the 

 gayest and the most admired of a large and happy 

 circle, but now through sickness dependent, after her 

 One staff and stay, for her minor comforts and amuse- 

 ments 011 the angel visits of a few kind friends, a 

 little worsted-work, or a new Quarterly, and, in the 

 absence or dulness of these, happy in the possession 

 of some fresh-gathered flower, and in watering and 

 tending a few pots of favourite plants, which are to 

 her as friends, and whose flourishing progress under 

 her tender care offers a melancholy but instructive 

 contrast to her own decaying strength. Some mild 



