GENERAL TREATMENT. 



67 



one to keep as many of their best specimens and best kinds within doors 

 during summer as they can, without having them crowded together. I 

 cannot give better directions than to say, that one should not touch the 

 other when in the house in summer, and if the nearest part of one to the 

 other is two or three inches apart, so much the better. The house, how- 

 ever, should be ventilated at all times, and, except in cases of high wind 

 or heavy rain, both top and front lights should be kept open night and^ 

 day ; and besides watering the earth in the pots freely when they requii-e 

 it, they should be vrell watered over-head with the garden engine every 

 day ; and if the weather is hot and dry, this operation should be performed 

 twice every day, namely, both morning and evening.'^ 



There is one branch of culture in which we diifer from the talented writer 

 above quoted; he recommends a partial degree of shade during the 

 hottest days of summer. In this particular the Messrs. Loddiges agree 

 with us, as do most of the continental cultivators. This, however, may be 

 less important in the latitude of Edinbm-gh than in that of London, and is 

 certainly much less so there than in most parts of France, or the south of 

 Germany, and for that reason it may not be noticed in the excellent 

 directions laid down by Mr. M'Nab. Messrs. Loddiges follow the con- 

 tinental fashion of shading by means of long slender branches of birch or 

 other deciduous trees, which are laid over the roof of the house, breaking 

 the full force of the sun's rays, while at the same time air is not much 

 obstructed. Our practice is to shade by spreading netting over the roof, 

 and latterly by having a fine thin canvass awning, mounted on rollers, on 

 the top of the house, which is let down or taken up at pleasure. 



Air cannot be too freely admitted to heaths, and, indeed, to all similar 

 plants, and to effect this the upright lights may be left open altogether, 

 until the thermometer, in the open au', falls to two or three degrees below 

 the freezing point ; indeed, we have even had the mould in the pots 

 frozen pretty hard without the appUcation of fire heat. If the house be 

 pretty air-tight and dry, ^fire heat v^U seldom be required ; for we find 

 by Mr. M'Nab, f Treatise, p. 31. J, that he has had no accident in this 

 respect when the thermometer out of doors indicated sixteen degrees of 

 frost. The following quotation on this subject of temperature is so excel- 

 lent that we are induced to give it' at length. 



"I have had all the heaths in the house frozen for days together, 

 so hard that the pots could not be removed from then* places without 

 breaking them, and fresh air constantly admitted at the time, and I have 

 never seen one of them suffer in the smallest degree from it ; but, on 

 the contrary, found them thrive better than under any other treatment. 



