SUITABLE PLANTS. 31 



THE DIFFERENCES. 



" A few did tolerably well," you say, " but many died 

 outright, or just lingered along like invalids." 



What a pitiful sight is this lingering and dying. How 

 much it detracts from the pleasure of keeping plants in 

 your rooms during the winter. Many persons give up the 

 attempt altogether, rather than watch disconsolately the 

 daily languishing of their pets. I am glad that you 

 have had enough of success to save you from such utter 

 discouragement. 



But why did not all your plants prosper alike ? What- 

 ever fault there may have been in the treatment, you gave 

 them all alike the best you then knew how to give, and 

 yet the results were widely different. " A few did toler- 

 ably well" neither died nor became invalids. If you 

 had taken only those few at the beginning, you would 

 have had no failure at all ; and on making another trial you 

 would doubtless regard them as suitable plants. As for 

 the others, the presumption is that they were the victims 

 of unfavorable circumstances. You may take to your- 

 selves the consoling reflection that probably, with some of 

 them at least, no one could have done any better that 

 they could not have been made to nourish in your rooms 

 by any possible art or skill. As the event seems to have 

 proved, they were not exactly suitable. This difference 

 of results in your first experiments with even a few plants, 

 points to some unexplained difference in the plants them- 

 selves, by virtue of which some may be called suitable 

 and others unsuitable. 



Looking now a little further, we come to the broad fact 

 which lies at the very foundation of floriculture, namely, 

 the vast variety of nature and need among plants. As you 

 know already, some live and others die in the same situa- 

 tion. Of course there is a reason for this. Habits and 

 wants belong only to things having some kind of life, and 



