GARDENING IN WINTER. 89 



fresh occasion for surprise. The genial warmth, the fra- 

 grance and brilliant colors of nobler plants, and the voluptuous 

 stillness that prevails in this enchanted spot, lull the fancy 

 into sweet romantic dreams ; we imagine ourselves in the 

 blooming groves of Italy, while nature, sunk into a death-like 

 torpor, announces the severity of a northern winter, through 

 the window of the pavilion." Both at St. Petersburg and 

 Moscow, peaches, grapes, pine-apples, oranges and other 

 tropical fruits are ripened to a good degree of perfection 

 under glass-culture. It must be borne in mind, not only that 

 the temperature falls to fifty-one degrees below Fahrenheit, 

 and the Neva freezes to the thickness of a yard and a half, 

 but especially that in the shortest days the sun rises after nine 

 o'clock and sets before three o'clock, and runs but a few 

 degrees above the horizon for this brief time. Such are the 

 difficulties with which they successfully contend. And this 

 they are able to do, mainly, through the agency of glass. 



Notice, then, the admirable adapteduess of glass for this 

 purpose. It is so transparent that when the sun's rays shine 

 upon a sheet at right angles, only two and a half per cent, of 

 the rays are intercepted by the glass, ninety-seven and a half 

 per cent, of the light and heat passing through unimpaired. 

 It is cheap ; it is very durable ; its brittleness being more than 

 counterbalanced, on fixed roofs, by the fact that it does not 

 rot. It is one of the most perfect non-conductors of heat, 

 and for this reason it is possible, in a clear, crisp winter's 

 night, when the breath goes up as incense, and 



" The owl, for all his feathers, is a-cold," 



to separate and exclude this arctic frost from a tropical 

 luxuriance of vegetation by a thin sheet of glass of the thick- 

 ness of one-sixteenth of an inch. By so small a space we 

 pass from the poles to the tropics. This is what glass can do 

 for us. 



Well may we study how we can best utilize a substance 

 which has been so cheaply and so abundantly provided by the 

 all-wise Creator for the vastly increasing demand of modern 

 times. Plant- culture under glass is a modern art. We find 

 no trace of it in the gorgeous culture of Babylon and other 

 ancient cities. We come down to a comparatively recent date 

 12 



