66 



GENERAL TREATMENT IN THE HOUSE. 



It has long been our opinion, although we are aware that it is not in 

 exact accordance with general practice, that the Epacris, Helichrysum, 

 and some other similar plants of the genera enumerated at the commence- 

 ment of this article, should not be taken out of the greenhouse during 

 summer, as the majority of plants are. Tliis opinion is strengthened, by 

 the success we have experienced, in a collection of about three hundred 

 species of the best sorts, so managed under our own immediate charge, and 

 much more so by observing the practice of those French and German cul- 

 tivators who follow a similar plan, as well as that of the superior manage- 

 ment of these plants in the Edinburgh botanical garden, where specimens 

 are to be seen grown in tubs, from three to four feet in diameter, and the 

 plants from eight to twelve feet in height. No cultivator has been so 

 successful in this department as ^Ir. M*Nab, the intelligent curator of 

 that garden, from whose valuable treatise on the subject we take the 

 following quotation. " AYhen I mention the treatment of heaths when in 

 the house," he says, " I must let it be understood that if I had sufficient 

 accommodation under glass, I never would take heaths out of doors, 

 unless it were for the purpose of shifting, or taking them from one house 

 to another. My practice would be to keep them in the house all summer, 

 giving them plenty of air, and to keep them cool during winter. I know 

 it is the common practice to t\\m heaths out of doors for four or five 

 months in summer and autumn, and it is also a pretty general opinion 

 that by doing so it makes them hardier, and enables them to stand the 

 winter better than they vrould do if kept within doors during summer. 

 From this opinion I must take the hberty of differing, as I know of no 

 species of heath that will not bear as much cold in winter, without suffer- 

 ing from it if kept in the house diuing summer, as they do when turned 

 out of doors, and many of them, (perhaps all), I know, will bear more 

 cold in the winter. For, by the latter practice, the young wood gets 

 better ripened, and better able to resist cold in winter." The same 

 excellent authority, in speaking of plants in general, recommends, where 

 there is sufficient accommodation, to keep all plants under glass during 

 summer, and, in such eases, to allow them plenty of room, " for unless 

 they are placed quite separate," he observes, from each other, so that 

 a free circulation can pass among them, they will suffer much more when 

 crowded in the hovise in the summer than they will do in the same situa- 

 tion duiing the winter, for in vrinter they are in a more dormant state, 

 and not grov,ing with the same ^igoui'. I would however advise every 



