108 
ON PLANTS IN DRAWING-ROOMS AND PLANT-CASES, &c. 
The removal of plants during the period of blooming, and especially many of 
the grotesque yet beautiful tribe of orchidaceee, to the drawing-room, has now 
become almost as fashionable as collecting a brilliant display of blossom in a green- 
house. Proprietors are thus enabled at any time to enjoy their favourites leisurely 
and pleasantly, unattended by the inconveniences arising from bad weather, and 
the detached and often distant situation of the plant-houses ; and also from the 
sometimes confined atmosphere, excessive heat, and insalubrious humidity 
maintained in them. 
There is, however, some unpleasantness connected with it which it would be 
desirable to remove. That volatile matter yielded by many flowering plants, and 
particularly orchidacese, which constitutes an agreeable fragance during the day, is 
poured out from some species in such excessive streams at night, and when 
confined in a close room proves not only disagreeable and inconvenient, but acts 
powerfully and banefully upon persons of delicate constitution. In fact it is 
recorded on the authority of De Candolle, that even the little violet, so universally 
esteemed for its grateful odour, carries a noxious influence with it, which is so 
overpowering that he has known ladies to faint from the mere circumstance of 
carrying too many about their persons. The aroma emitted from some plants has 
been known to produce death ; and there are few persons but can testify to the 
oppression or languor experienced under the influence of odours that are agreeable 
when not too highly concentrated. With these facts, then, before us, further 
argument scarcely need be adduced to convince of the expediency of some mode 
of mitigating or removing the baneful power ; especially if it can be done without 
affecting, but only modifying, the continuance of the present practice. 
But even were other arguments needing, they are not wanting. There is a 
disproportion between the atmosphere of the plant-houses and that of an ordinary 
sitting-room, which acts as injuriously on the constitution of the plant, as the 
plant acts on the nerves of a delicate person. Supposing a plant at the time of its 
introduction to be in a free-growing state, the transition from the warm moist 
atmosphere of a stove to the comparatively dry air of a sitting-room, will be apt 
to impose a check that may require some time to recover from. But we will not 
insist much upon this, as we are persuaded that much of it may be obviated by a 
proper selection of plants, and by a preparatory treatment. 
"With a view to the better preservation of plants in a sitting-room, several 
individuals have modified the construction of the Wardian cases into portable 
miniature greenhouses or plant cases, adapted for rooms. The original Wardian 
case is hermetically closed ; those we allude to are provided with the means of 
ventilation on the top, and with small side-doors for the same purpose, and to 
allow the plants to be examined or removed at any time. Similar contrivances 
