372 How to grow Specimen Pelargoniums. 



the water at 70 and 72°. So long as fire heat was apphed 

 to the boilers, the temperature of the house was 76 to 90°, 

 and of the water 76 to 80°. 



Yours, respectfully, 



John Fisk Allen. 

 Salem, Mass., July 23, 1853. 



Art. VI. How to grow -Specimen Pelargoniums. By the 



Editor. 



All amateur or professional plant cultivators are familiar with 

 the term specimen plant, — implying as it does a finely grown 

 and symmetrically trained one, — no matter of what kind it 

 may be. A verbena, straggling over a few crooked sticks or 

 a shapeless trellis can scarcely be called a specimen ; but if 

 the sticks are neatly made, and the plant carefully trained so 

 as to quite cover them in some symmetrical shape, and 

 clothed with flowers, it becomes what the word means, a 

 specimen of what the verbena may be when skilfully culti- 

 vated. So with a pelargonium or geranium. A tall lean 

 plant, with a few green leaves at the top, and three or four 

 clusters of flowers, does not show superior cultivation, or 

 give any idea of what it may be made under skilful hands. 

 But let it undergo a year's care of an intelligent cultivator, 

 and he will show what culture is — and will produce a speci- 

 men which would no more be supposed to be the same plant 

 than a pear tree would be taken for a currant bush. A speci- 

 men is, therefore, what a plant may be made by skilful treat- 

 ment ; and this treatment can only be afl'orded by those who 

 have studied the habits of the plant ; who know its capacity 

 of growth ; and who have reduced such knowledge to its 

 practical application. 



It is but a few years since plants have been grown to that 

 perfection which has given them the name of specimens; 

 and their origin may be attributed to the Exhibitions of the 

 London Horticultural Society which, by the liberal premiums 



