Choosing the Site 



beauty of hot-house plants, and desires to make them a 

 speciality, it is evident that the cost of production would 

 be higher in a cold district than in a warm one, owing to 

 the larger requirement in fuel. His tastes, again, may 

 tend towards a love of conifers, and he would then be ill- 

 advised to attempt their culture in a smoke-laden district ; 

 for if direct failure were not the outcome, his specimens 

 would be by no means attractive, and a struggle for 

 supremacy between a conifer and an adverse climatic 

 environment is really a heart-rending scene. 



To choose a site, then, with all due regard to making 

 easy the path of success, and rendering the expenses as 

 light as possible, we have to consider the climatic con- 

 ditions, the proximity of large towns, the quality and 

 character of the soil, the aspect and shelter, and the size 

 of the holding which latter, of course, is largely influ- 

 enced by the means and tastes of the intending settler. A 

 few words under each of these headings may perhaps lead 

 to their being more carefully considered, and disappoint- 

 ment rendered the more unlikely. 



Environment. 



We hear so much nowadays of the powers of environ- 

 ment, and so much has been penned on the subject by 

 writers taking different points of view, that the reader 

 seeking for literary divertisement will perhaps weary of 

 finding it mentioned in this book. If, as is now generally 

 admitted, a man's actions are governed and his character 

 moulded by environment, how much more so must be that 

 of the plant ; for no matter how strong the heredity of 

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