§30 APPLICATION OF PRINCIPLES. 



of April and May, very greatly that of the warmest 

 valley in Jamaica in the hottest period of the year. 

 There are probably as few forcing-houses in which 

 the trees are not more strongly stimulated by the 

 close and damp air of the night, than by the tempera- 

 ture of the dry air of the noon of the following day. 

 The practice which occasions this cannot be right : it 

 is in direct opposition to nature." In the same paper 

 from which the foregoing is an extract (Hort. Trans., 

 ii. 135), the same great experimentalist records the 

 result of his own management of a peach-house, where 

 a due regard was had to the preservation of a suffi- 

 ciently low temperature at night. " As early in the 

 spring as I wanted the blossoms of my Peach trees to 

 unfold, my house was made warm during the middle 

 of the day ; but towards night it was suffered to cool, 

 and the trees were then sprinkled, by means of a large 

 syringe, with clear water, as nearly at the tempera- 

 ture at which that usually rises from the ground, as 

 I could obtain it ; and little or no artificial heat was 

 given during the night, unless there appeared a pros- 

 pect of frost. Under this mode of treatment, the 

 blossoms advanced with very great vigour, and as 

 rapidly as I wished them, and presented, when ex- 

 panded, a larger size than I had ever before seen of 

 the same varieties ; which circumstance is not unim- 

 portant, because the size of the blossom, in any given 

 variety, regulates, to a very considerable extent, the 

 bulk of the future fruit." 



