32 Evils of exposing Green-house Plants during Summer. 



of the green-house ought, except during long-continued rain or 

 thunder storms, to be kept open both day and night, to admit as 

 much air as possible; and the plants should occasionally be 

 syringed over-head with water, which may be done at any hour 

 of the day, without regard to the shining of the sun. I mention 

 this, from having been myself sometimes cautioned never to wet 

 the leaves of plants when the sun was shining upon them, unless 

 I wished to have them burned. When the roots of plants thus 

 exposed to the sun can be preserved in a tolerably cool and 

 moist state, their tops will not only bear the sun, but his full 

 influence is indispensable to their health and vigour, and the full 

 developement of their flowers. 



Orange trees, camellias, and, indeed, all plants with coriaceous 

 or thick fleshy leaves, are, from a variety of causes, liable to have 

 their foliage injured by the sun ; but this injury would seldom 

 accrue to them were they retained in the house both summer and 

 winter, and kept as cool as possible during the latter season. 

 Consistently with the above considerations and provisions, fire 

 heat need never be applied till the thermometer in the house 

 has indicated three or four decrees of frost. 



I offer these remarks in particular application to evergreen 

 plants with heath-like foliage, but more especially to the several 

 genera composing the two splendid natural orders £riceas and 

 Epacrideae, which perhaps contain a greater number of really 

 beautiful plants than are to be found in the whole of the other 

 orders put together. Most of the plants belonging to these two 

 orders are furnished with roots of an exceedingly delicate nature, 

 but, from the fine hair-like substance of which they are composed, 

 no plants are better adapted for growing in pots, or are sus- 

 ceptible of a higher degree of perfection by this mode of culture. 

 The means, however, which enable the attentive cultivator to 

 produce specimens of great elegance and beauty, also operate to 

 cause disappointment where the least neglect occurs, either in 

 the application of too much or too little water ; and these are 

 evils which cannot always be guarded against, even by those who 

 are the most careful. In plants having their roots confined 

 within the limits of a garden pot, and exposed to the sun on the 

 shelf or stage of a green-house, and watered at certain periods 

 of the day, without much regard either to the state of the weather 

 or the degree of their several wants, it is no wonder that, when 

 so treated, some of them should, occasionally, appear sickly, and 

 others of them die ; indeed, it is certainly less to be wondered 

 at than that they should exist at all. 



The chief objection, therefore, to plants being kept in the 

 house in summer is, that, being exposed to the sun, the earth in 

 the pots becomes dry, and the extremes of heat and cold, wet 

 and dry, to which the roots are thence subjected, cause the 



