GLASS STRUCTURES AND APPLIANCES. 



163 



will be seen that even the commonest plant should 

 not be allowed to have the soil frozen about its roots 

 when so placed. 



It is not difficult to raise Tritomas from seeds, and 

 when the seedlings are well looked after they can be 

 got into flower in a comparatively short space of 

 time. The seeds should be sown in early spring, in 

 pans or pots of a good free soil, and placed in a cold 

 frame as soon as large enough. The seedling plants 

 should be pricked off into store-pots, then, when 

 they have grown into the necessary size, be potted 

 ofl: singly into larger pots, wintered in them, and 

 planted out in early summer to flower. We have 

 known the plants to bloom the same season from 

 seed, but especial care was taken of them, and they 

 were encouraged to grow in every possible way. 



GLASS STRUCTURES AND 

 APPLIANCES. 



MANAGEMENT AND ROUTINE. 



NOTWITHSTANDING the full descriptive notes 

 given of plants in our exhaustive descriptive 

 lists, what has been advanced on plant structui-es, and 

 the cultural guidance already offered, possibly some- 

 thing more is needful to link, as it were, the plants, 

 the houses, and the cultivator together in the fami- 

 liar matters of daily practice. Even well-read and 

 deeply-learned men are not seldom at a loss to know 

 how to proceed when confronted with well-built plant- 

 houses crowded to the doors with healthy plants. 

 Their knowledge is often too abstract and too far off 

 to become available in time, and while they are hunt- 

 ing it up the plants suffer or starve. The excuse is 

 too often made that practical gardening can neither 

 be popularised nor taught on paper. This is but half 

 a truth at the best ; and having done our best to 

 teach and to learn it thus, the little truth left may 

 be wholly exorcised. 



No doubt object-lessons in horticulture are better 

 than illustration, and a garden forms the best school, 

 provided always there are wise teachers and good 

 examples in it ; but, still, books may do far more 

 towards teaching horticulture than is generally sup- 

 posed. This much, at least, may be affinned : it is 

 of little use building fine or useful conservatories, 

 plant, stove, or Orchid-houses, &c., and furnishing 

 them with plants of much beauty and great value, 

 unless the every -day management of both is such as 

 commands success. Now success is the product, not 

 of one great effort, but of many little ones, such as 

 temperature, heating, damping down, watering, cul- 

 tivation, shading, cleaning, training, shifting, or 

 potting, or substitutes for the same. 



Remarks on these heads will be alike applicable to 

 all sorts of plant-houses, and to every sort of plant 

 grown in them. 



Some of these points may seem trifling in them- 

 selves, but they are really not so ; and while each is 

 important in itself, attention to the whole is needed 

 to insure anything like success in the culture either 

 of plants in pits, conservatories, or Orchid-houses. 



Temperature. — This is not only one of the most 

 potent factors in cultivation, but the key-note, as 

 it wei-e, of the whole. A certain amount of heat is 

 essential to the life and growth of all plants, and no 

 sooner is a house fit for use, and indeed long before 

 it reaches that state, than the temperature to be main- 

 tained in it must be determined. 



Purjiose, or rather occupants, goes a long way in 

 determining these points. Taking a minimum or 

 night temperature — one of 40*^ will suffice for a cool 

 green-house, and 45*^ to 50° for a warm conservatory, 

 in each case a rise of five degrees by fire-heat being 

 desirable by day. 



Practical men always make a broad and liberal 

 distinction between artificial and natural — that is, as 

 they term it, fire and sun-heat. It is found, indeed, 

 as the result of constant experience, that five degrees 

 of fire-heat will weaken and draw plants more than 

 fifteen degrees of solar heat. In fact, this is hardly 

 a fair way of putting it, for while the lesser increase 

 of fire-heat may injure the plants, the greater in- 

 crease of solar warmth may benefit them. 



As the season advances, both green-houses and con- 

 servatories rise in temperature with the growing 

 power of the sun, till the green-house advances by 

 day to 45 — 50°, and the conservatory to 50" — 55°, and 

 beyond these figures neither house should rise with- 

 out a free circulation of air, which may, if skilfully 

 managed, be so admitted and discharged without 

 creating cutting draughts, as to reduce the tempe- 

 rature under that of the external atmosphere. 



Temperature of Plant-stoves.— Where there 

 are two or three of these, it is a common and useful 

 practice to keep one house five or ten degrees warmer 

 than the other. In such cases the one is called the 

 hot or tropical stove, and the other the cool or inter- 

 mediate house. Both houses may also vary very con- 

 siderably, according to the season of the year, and 

 the time of day. It is customary to keep all plant- 

 stoves at their summer heat during winter, and to 

 bring down the daily summer heat to an hour or so 

 before and after sunrise. It does not, however, suit 

 stove-plants to be subjected to too low a temperature, 

 and the hot-stove should not sink to less than 65 

 either during winter or the early morning. 



The cool or intermediate house may sink fully five 



