AND CONSEEVATORT. 5 



place the furnace under cover and in close proximity to a yard 

 where the fuel is stored, the worst of the winter work will be 

 greatly facilitated, and the owner's purse will be saved. A 

 furnace under cover will afford more heat for your consumption 

 of fuel than one exposed to the wintry blast, and the gardener 

 will not so much dread the task of stoking on a bitter winter 

 night as he will be likely to do in the case where the glare of 

 the fire and the blinding snow assail his eyes at the same time, 

 and his fingers are frozen at the very moment that his face is 

 flushed with looking into the disposition of the burning fuel. 



In the construction of a plant house the first matter of im- 

 portance is to determine the purpose to which it is to be 

 applied. On this will depend the choice of site and aspect, the 

 size of the house, and the extent to which embellishments are 

 to be employed within and without. It will be well for those 

 who study economy to remember that a very plain substantial 

 house, thoroughly adapted for plant culture, will always look 

 respectable, even if it is not decorated like a pavilion or pagoda ; 

 and its use will justify it far more satisfactorily than any amount 

 of ornament. There are some grand conservatories iu the land 

 in which nothing of a vegetable nature except mildew will 

 thrive, and not a few very humble greenhouses in which plants 

 grow as if by magic, and provide their owners with an endless 

 variety of priceless (though costless) pleasures. The idle man 

 who does not intend to do much in the gardening way may be 

 wise to build himself a roomy and thoroughly substantial con- 

 servatory, attached to or very near his dwelling, and furnish it 

 with dracaenas, yuccas, agaves, and dasylirions. An ambitious 

 amateur may set his mind upon a block of houses for camellias, 

 heaths, cacti, pelargoniums, and fifty other classes of plants. 

 This one would do well to consult a garden architect, and de- 

 termine from the first to do the thing well or not at all. But 

 for every one who requires to be accommodated in a peculiar 

 way there will be hundreds who want what is commonly 

 understood as a greenhouse, and the question is. How are 

 they to begin ? 



A good general advice to all such would be to erect for the 

 present one good span-roofed house, running north and south, 

 in a quite open sunny spot, and have it as large as the purse will 

 allow for the whole thing to be done properly. A large body 

 of air maintains an equable temperature with far less trouble 

 of management than a small body, and hence in a burst of 



