WINDOW PLANTS, ETC. 55 



ness respecting plants as decorators in our apartments, 

 for no surer starting point for reformation can be found 

 than the source of the evil. Our climate is the first thing 

 that suggests itself as a probable cause. We do not, how- 

 ever, intend to declaim against our climate, for as we 

 remarked when treating of sub-tropical gardening, we 

 are inclined to think more highly of it now than at any- 

 former period of our lives ; bat as we are able to cultivate 

 in our gardens such an immense variety of evergreen 

 and other shrubs, far beyond what can be done in the 

 less propitious clime of our neighbours, and as we live 

 in the open air so much amongst them, it is possible 

 that in this way we may have felt, in a much less degree, 

 the necessity for having plants in our dwelling-houses. 

 Again, the decoration of apartments with us, is a far 

 more discouraging afiair than with our friends over the 

 water. There they have heat uniformly diffused in their 

 dwellings, without dust or draughts ; on our side the 

 channel, >however, the rooms are in most cases anything 

 but congenial to plant life, for it is quite possible for plants 

 standing in the windows to be nearly frozen, whilst a 

 cheerful fire is blazing on the hearth. Then we have 

 also to contend against the dust &nd smoke from our sea- 

 coal fires, which completely choke the leaves of plants, 

 whilst the close stoves of our neighbours do not allow 

 either to penetrate the room, and but little dust or dirt 

 arise from the stoves themselves. In this respect we 

 shall always labour under considerable disadvantages in 

 the decoration of our dwelling-rooms. 



But if we search deeper for the source of this neglect, 

 it appears to us that we must lay it to our system of 

 education, and to the consequent lack of that refined 

 taste as a nation, for which other countries have so long 



