36 THE FLORIST AND POMOEOGIST. 



Musas and Ferns, Begonias, &c, looking very much starved, and some even 

 ridiculous, with their leaves flapping like the torn sails of a windmill — they are 

 out of the question for England. Not so with the Australian Palms and the 

 tree Ferns your correspondent notices, at page 150, as having seen at Mr. 

 Veitch's. I predict a bright future for these as ornaments on all grass lawns. 



Cannas and Caladiums are easy to manage ; ours are now laid in odd 

 corners, forcing them on a little in spring. They are clean, and may be put in 

 any house with a little heat. 



{To ie continued.) 



Cleveden. J. Fleming. 



THE GREAT EXHIBITION AND HORTICULTURE. 



We hope the forthcoming Exhibition will produce us some useful kind of 

 covering materials for garden structures ; the present high price of Russian 

 mats and their limited supply rendering the manufacturing of some substitute 

 imperative. W e should suppose that there exists plenty of raw material in 

 the shape of coarse vegetable fibre, which only awaits the process of con- 

 version to fit it for the purpose, and for which if sufficiently low in price there 

 would be an unlimited demand. Mats have certainly the advantage of long 

 usage, and are garden-looking things when employed as a protective, but are at 

 this time the most expensive item in garden management. Frigi clomo is too 

 expensive, and does not resist wet, which the substitute should ; and also be 

 a good nonconductor, and sufficiently pliable to roll up when not wanted. 



It would be within the objects of the Royal Horticultural Society to offer a 

 prize for the most useful and economical material for this purpose, by way of 

 directing the attention of manufacturers to the subject. 



BOTTOM HEAT. 



The interest attaching to this subject is still increasing, and its adoption 

 as a leading principle in the cultivation of forced and exotic plants will doubt- 

 less soon become universal, it may therefore interest some of your readers to 

 know more about its effects on growing plants. 



The application of bottom heat to the culture of such plants as the Pine, 

 Melon, and Cucumber, is as old as their cultivation in this country^ More 

 recently, early vinery-borders have been supplied with bottom heat, either by 

 means of hot water or dung linings ; and numerous instances in the pot culti- 

 vation of exotic plants might be adduced to show the advantages which delicate 

 or sickly plants derive from having their roots placed in a uniform medium 

 heated to a point between 70° and 90°. 



It was the errors committed by rash cultivators in exposing the roots of 

 their plants to an unnatural amount of heat, which of course injured if it did not 

 destroy them, which led many good gardeners and physiologists to question its 

 utility, and led them to suppose that in trying to go beyond what Nature has 

 ordained for living plants we are acting in opposition to her laws. If we 

 confined our cultivation to plants only of our own climate, this reasoning would 

 hold food, but even then so far only as our culture did not extend beyond the 

 natural seasons when each respective plant attained maturity ; for directly Ave 

 commence either forcing or retarding we enter into an artificial state of culture 

 requiring artificial means to insure success. And thus it is that the judicious 

 application of bottom heat comes in to assist Nature, in opposition (so far as 

 regards the growth of plants out of their natural season) to her general economy. 



