342 MANUAL OF GARDENING 
The window for plants should have a southern, southeastern, 
or eastern exposure. Plants need all the light they can get in 
the winter, especially those that are expected to bloom. The 
window should be tight-fitting. Shutters and a curtain will be 
an advantage in cold weather. 
Plants like a certain uniformity in conditions. It is very 
trying on them, and often fatal to success, to have them snug 
and warm one night and pinched in a temperature only a few 
degrees above freezing the next. Some plants will live in spite 
of it, but they cannot be expected to prosper. Those whose 
rooms are heated with steam, hot water, or hot air will have to 
guard against keeping rooms too warm fully as much as keeping 
them too cool. Rooms in brick dwellings that have been warm 
all day, if shut up and made snug in the evening, will often keep 
warm over night without heat except in the coldest weather. 
Rooms in frame dwellings exposed on all sides soon cool down. 
It is difficult to grow plants in rooms lighted by gas. Most 
living-rooms have air tpo dry for plants. In such cases the bow- 
window may be set off from the room by glass doors; one then 
has a miniature conservatory. A pan of water on the stove 
or on the register and damp moss among the pots, will help to 
afford plants the necessary humidity. 
The foliage will need cleansing from time to time to free 
it from dust. A bath tub provided with a ready outlet for the 
water is an excellent place for this purpose. The plants may 
be turned on their sides and supported on a small box above 
the bottom of the tub. Then they may be freely syringed with- 
out danger of making the soil too wet. It is usually advisable 
not to wet the flowers, however, especially the white waxen 
kinds, like hyacinths. The foliage of rex begonias should be 
cleansed with a piece of dry or only slightly moist cotton. But 
if the leaves can be quickly dried off by placing them in the 
open air on mild days, or moderately near the stove, the foliage 
may be syringed. 
