GENERAL MANAGEMENT 



OF THE 



STOVE DEPARTMENT. 



INTRODUCTION. 



The plant-stove is a department in horticulture, dedicated 

 to the cultivation of such plants as are natives of tropical or 

 warm climates, and which will not prosper in any of the 

 other plant structures noticed in a former part of this work. 

 The degree of temperature suitable for those plants which 

 enter into this department is necessarily very high, varying 

 from a minimum of 60, to 90 degrees or upwards, of Fahren- 

 heit, as a maximum. 



Stoves are much less numerous in the British gardens than 

 other plant structures, and consequently the management of 

 them is generally much less understood. The expense at- 

 tending them is the most probable cause of their limited 

 number, and certainly not any want of interest or splendour in 

 the plants or their flowers. To this division, in fact, belongs 

 most of the splendid flowering, eccentric, and curious plants, 

 and indeed those which supply us with some of our most 

 valuable spices, vegetable medicines, oils, gums, and dyes ; 

 including many which we are only acquainted with as far as 

 their history is connected with the arts or sciences, or by 

 particularities related of them by travellers. A portion of them 

 supply a numerous part of mankind with food who are yet in 

 a state of natural simplicity, and many of them constitute a 

 considerable part of the importations of this country, and 

 thence become beneficial, not only as a lucrative reward to the 

 speculator, but also as diflTusing comfort and sustenance to a 

 large portion of the community. Coffee, sugar, cocoa, sngo, 

 and chocolate, may be enumerated, amongst many others, as 

 constitutini^ a useful part of our daily food; and Jesuit's-bark, 

 cimamon, ipecacuanha, balsam of capivi, cassia, and gum- 



♦ B 



