360 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK 



kind ; and in very cold weather this should not be removed 

 during the daytime : for if the plants have been touched 

 with frost, the admission of light will destroy or maim them, 

 whereas, if kept in darkness, they wiU suffer little or no 

 injury. Several families may unite in the expense of form- 

 ing a cold-pit and thus fill it with plants at a small expense 

 and very little inconvenience to each. Very little if any 

 water should be given to plants thus at rest. 



Even where plants are wanted to bloom in the parlor late 

 in the winter, it is often better to let them spend the fore- 

 part of the winter in the cellar or pit. 



Our second criticism respects the character of winter col- 

 lections. 



The most noticeable error is the strange crowd of plants 

 often huddled together, as if the excellence of a collection 

 consisted in the number of things brought together. Every- 

 thing that the florist sees in other collections has been pro- 

 cured, as if it would be an unpardonable negligence not to 

 have what others have. Hence we sometimes see scores 

 of plants, very different in their habits, requiring widely 

 different conditions of growth, reduced to one regimen, 

 viz. a place near the window, so much water a day, and 

 one turning round. This summary procedure, of course, 

 soon results in a vegetable Falstaff s regiment ; some plants 

 being long, sprawling, gangling, some dormant and dumpy ; 

 some shedding their leaves and going to rest with unripe 

 wood, some mildewed, a few faintly struggling to show 

 here and there a bewildered blossom. In such a collection 

 the eye is pained by the entire want of sympathy arising 

 from jumbling together the most dissimilar kinds; from the 

 want of robust health, and from the entire disappearance 

 of that vivid freshness and sprightliness of growth, com- 

 pact while it is rapid, which gives a charm to well man- 

 aged plants. 



All plants which are not growing, or for whose growth 

 your parlors are not suitable, should be put into the cellar 



