220 GARDEN AND FARM TOPICS. 



There is no mystery or skill about it, other than to select 

 the best or fittest and place them together. This done, 

 man's work is done : Nature does the rest. It is laid 

 down almost as an axiom, by amateur horticulturists, 

 that the water with which plants are watered should be 

 soft or rain water, and of the temperature of the room 

 or green-house wherein the plants are. Commercial 

 florists, who grow hundreds of thousands of plants, can- 

 not do this ; and yet, as a rule, their plants are in the 

 very best possible health, far better than that of the 

 amateur who goes to this unnecessary trouble, for the 

 reason that the real conditions of success (the proper 

 temperature or moisture) can be given in the green-house, 

 but not in ordinary sitting-rooms. 



Then, too, the flower-loving amateur is trammeled by 

 another dogma, this time bearing the authority of quasi- 

 science; for a great man, the family doctor, armed with 

 a smattering of chemical lore, glibly asserts that 

 plants, at night, give out carbonic acid gas, which is 

 poisonous to animal life, and, consequently, if plants are 

 kept in sleeping-rooms, sickness and even death may 

 follow. No theory can be more destitute of truth. 

 That plants give out carbonic acid gas at night may be, 

 but that it is in quantity enough to endanger human life 

 is utter nonsense. If it were so, we would have no in- 

 sects attacking plants, for their low organization would 

 make them the first victims to a gas as poisonous as car- 

 bonic acid. Besides, most gardeners who have had 

 charge of green-house plants, know that on cold nights 

 the most comfortable quarter is the green-house ; and 

 yet I think it would be difficult to find in any business a 

 healthier class of men than professional gardeners. I 

 have pleasure in believing that my denunciations of this 

 absurdity, begun over twenty years ago, has had some- 



