THE PLANT DECORATION OE APARTMENTS. 263 



since tlie ^ Lady Ferns'' and ''Venus^s Hair'' appeared; and 

 that you could not help youi^self looking now and then at 

 the said ^ Venus''s Hair/ and agreeing that nature^s real 

 beauties were somewhat superior to the ghastly woollen 

 caricatures which they have superseded.^'' Eerns_, to be sure^ 

 have been a great help and a great attraction; but they 

 are by no means so readily grown in rooms as some things 

 to be presently mentioned; nor are they supreme as regards 

 verdure and elegance. By a combination of all the 

 plants suitable for 

 this purpose^ we 

 may not only find 

 very agreeable in- 

 door employment^ 

 but create the 

 highest kind of or- 

 nament and inte- 

 rest in the house 

 at all seasons. 



Not only are we^ 

 deficient as regards 

 the better kinds of 

 plant ornament in 

 houses^ but also 

 in large gardens — 

 with far greater 

 means of readily 

 developing it than 

 occur on the Con- 

 tinent. Merely displaying a few popular or showy sub- 

 jects is not plant decoration in any high sense ! Rooms 

 are often overcrowded with ornaments^ many of them 

 exact representations of natural objects ; but in the case of 

 the plants we may^ without inconvenience,, enjoy and pre- 

 serve the living natural objects themselves. Those we em- 

 ploy for this purpose now are mostly of a fleeting character^ 

 and such as cannot be preserved in health for any length of 

 time in living rooms. Eut if in addition to the best of 

 these we select handsome-leaved plants of a leathery tex- 



Maranta fasciata. 



