222 FAULT OF WAEDIAN CASES. 



operation is essentially automatic ; it is its own gardener in every way. 

 Tlie moment its structure enables the possessor to give it daily atten- 

 tion — in short, to cultivate the plants within it, it ceases to he 

 Wardian, and may as well be called by any other name, as has been 

 already shown. Plants cannot be cultivated well in the absence of free 

 access to air in motion. The more rapid the motion, within certain 

 limits, the higher the health of plants, and vice versa. This is the 

 foundation of good gardening ; and it is precisely this which is unat- 

 tainable in a Wardian Case. The latter is the opposite of a natural 

 condition ; but plants demand all the resemblance to natural conditions 

 which is to be secured by art. Direct, constant, and unrestrained 

 communication with air, perpetually striking and then quitting them^ 

 is as necessary to a plant as to an animal ; and that the Wardian Case 

 is intended to render impossible. It is not indeed too much to add that 

 so far as gardening, properly so called, is concerned, the Wardian 

 Case has done nothing more than was effected years before it was sug- 

 gested. As a convenient means of enabling plants to support existence 

 under difficult circumstances it has value ; and that is alL In short, 

 it is to plants what tripe de roche, Bark-bread and Pem-reot are to 

 man — a means of prolonging life under" difficult circumstances. 



Nature no more causes plants to grow in half air-tight rooms than 

 amidst rays of coloured light. In the natural world vegetation 

 subsists in its greatest activity in the presence of white light ; red 

 light, and yellow light, and blue light are unknown ; and if green 

 light occurs, it is only in. the recesses of deep forests, where little is to 

 be found except Fungi, or Mosses and Perns. So it is with unventi- 

 lated places ; they are the exception to the natural law, which declares 

 that living things shall have access to air. The lowest orders of 

 animals and the lowest of plants thrive indeed in such localities, for all 

 places seem to have their allotted inhabitants ; but the great World of 

 vegetation knows of no healthy existence except where the air moves 

 freely around it. In suffocated places we find lean and sickly races, 

 too weak to stand alone, and struggling to reach a better atmosphere ; 

 these places are the Ward's Cases of the wilderness ; natural accidents 

 from which all things endeavour to escape. 



When the external, air is admitted into a glazed house 

 containing a moist atmosphere, it,, under ordinary circum- 

 stances, is much colder than that with which it mixes; the 

 heated damp air rushes out at the upper ventilators, and the 

 drier cold air takes its place ; the latter rapidly abstracts from 

 the plants and the earth, or the vessels in which they grow, a 

 part of their moisture, and thus gives a sudden shock to their 



