and Management of Orchidaceous Plants. 553 



am afraid my efforts in aid of his scheme will, in the long run,' 

 turn upon the adage which tells you " You must take the will 

 for the deed." Yet the thing is well worthy the attention of 

 those who can follow it up to a satisfactory result. To obtain 

 such a result, on which amateurs and others could safely rely 

 and act, would certainty be, as he justly remarks, of essential 

 service to all interested in gardening;. After all our science 

 and successful practice, we have not any thing yet tangible in 

 the way of horticultural hygrometry. The whole thing is a 

 mere chaos, from which chaos every gardener carves as much 

 as suits his own views. It is by no means an easy matter to 

 arrive at a desirable result, even if we were to register accu= 

 rately our barometric and hygrometric observations for a series 

 of years. There are very many circumstances of a local nature 

 constantly at work, either for or against the views of the 

 experimentalist, over which he may have no control ; yet this is 

 no argument against the commencement of keeping such regis- 

 ters of the heat and moisture in our plant stoves. I am not 

 very sanguine as to the result of my own observations, but I 

 certainly will make a beginning. 



My esteemed employer, Mr. Harris, has already paid a good 

 deal of attention to this subject, and is fully aware of the im- 

 portance of a well regulated atmosphere for the different families 

 of plants in his collection. He placed one of Mason's double 

 thermometers in our Orchideae house, which is certainly of 

 essential service, as far as my superintendence is concerned. 

 In the growing season we keep the wet and dry thermometers 

 pretty close to the same degree, not by syringing, but by ' 

 pouring water on the paths, and every spare place in the house. 

 In winter, the dry, or common, thermometer is allowed to rise 

 from 5° to 10° above the wet one. I may as well mention that, 

 for many years, I believe that I and a few other gardeners 

 keep all our houses rather moister than is generally done by 

 others. The result is, a more rapid, and, perhaps, a healthier 

 state of vegetation, at the expense of flowers ; for I do not think 

 that plants pushed on in their growth by strong stimuli are 

 such free flowerers as when this is not done; and when we con- 

 sider the real nature of inflorescence, we need not expect to 

 obtain both objects by our treatment. For my own part, I 

 like to see plants alwa}s in a healthy state. But I am travel- 

 ling too wide of the mark, for I do not include orchidaceous 

 plants generally under these remarks, and consider, in their case, 

 as I do in that of the generality of bulbs, that they must have 

 their season of rest, if you wish them to flower. If you merely 

 wish to increase their size, without much regard to flowering, 

 you should, and must, keep up a stimulus all the year through. 

 No one that I am acquainted with keeps up such a stimulus to 



Vol. XV. — No. 115. p p 



