86 THE ORCHID REVIEW. 
care be taken to guard against them. Asan additional safeguard, I would 
advise that a considerable amount of moisture be also distributed in all 
departments. 
Syringing overhead with tepid water may now again commence, of 
course at present doing it only as soon’ as the temperature is up in the 
mornings. This will greatly refresh and invigorate the plants, keeping 
them, so to speak, sufficiently moist, without causing the compost in which 
they are planted to become over wet at this early season, the latter being 
very injurious. No alarm need be experienced about the water lodging in 
the axils of the leaves or in the new growths, as no damping off will take 
place if the ventilation is properly attended to. Damping off and such like 
diseases take place only when there is a stagnant atmosphere, caused by 
an excess of moisture with insufficient ventilation to carry off the same. 
Such an atmosphere is impure and unwholesome, and favours disease. A 
solitary growth will, of course, sometimes go wrong, even under the most 
approved cultural conditions. It is so in thé whole vegetable kingdom. 
And what I wish to point out is, that failures of this kind occur with equal, 
if not with greater, frequenty when the greatest precautions are taken 
against the lodgement of water in the breaks than they do when the plants 
are deliberately syringed over head. 
While on the subject of damping and ventilation, I may say that the 
latter should still be done with a considerable amount of care, and more 
especially so in the Intermediate and Warm departments. A good deal of 
harm may result from a too liberal use of the top ventilators at this 
particular season, when cold searching east winds are prevalent. It is the 
bottom ventilators which should be mostly worked at present, giving only 4 
chink on top when it seems absolutely necessary for the prevention of an 
overheated atmosphere. Apart from these trying cold winds, and 
especially when the outside weather is moist and mild, as it frequently 
is, there is a great advantage gained by keeping a chink on the top 
almost continually, and particularly on houses which are very tightly 
glazed, for it conduces to a continual, though steady, circulation of 
fresh air. : 
The best season for re-potting is now setting in, and many are the kinds 
that may be either re-potted, or top-dressed, as the case may demand. 
Regarding this important work, it is highly advisable that a few vital points 
should be kept carefully in view, such as never re-potting any plant unless 
it is, firstly, necessary, and secondly, at the right stage of growth it ie 
operation to have the best results. Also to use clean pots and drainag® 
and the best procurable fibrous peat and fresh sphagrum moss. And again, 
guard against potting into over large receptacles, and be as careful as : 
possible in turning out the plants of removing the old materials from them, = 
