ON THE INFLUENCE OP CLIMATE ON PLANTS. 
Ill 
important agency on the various functions of vegetable life, and according as they 
are more or less adapted to the peculiar structure and constitution of individual 
plants, in the same degree they are deleterious or nutritive. It is a remarkable and 
interesting fact, that, in their natural state, or that in which they spontaneously 
flourish, certain plants are only to be found in those localities wherein the state of 
the atmosphere, as it regards heat or cold, humidity or aridity, and several other 
elementary constituents which affect plants, is perfectly consonant to their peculiar 
habits, and supplies them with the requisite stimulus and nutriment to enable them 
to develop their flowers, mature their seeds, and otherwise propagate or multiply 
their species. It is also equally notorious, that when the same plants are removed 
from their natural situations, and placed in others where a due degree of those 
atmospheric principles is not afforded, the plants in consequence speedily languish, 
and ultimately perish ; indeed, it is universally admitted, that though diversity of 
soil has a most extensive influence upon plants and vegetables, it cannot be said 
to affect them so materially as variation of climate, in which term we propose to 
include, in popular language and for practical purposes, the three leading particulars 
of light, heat, and moisture. With this conviction powerfully impressed upon our 
minds, we have been led to ask — " in what way can a knowledge of the particular 
influence of climate be brought to bear on horticultural science, so as to assist and 
direct the gardener in his endeavours to cultivate any plant or tribe of plants to 
the highest degree of perfection ? " The answer to such a question seems obviously 
this — by teaching him to adopt the same treatment towards each individual plant 
or tribe of plants which those plants receive from the bounteous and wise hand of 
nature in their wild and native state. When plants are introduced to this country 
from foreign parts, the gardener or amateur naturally inquires whether they were 
collected in tropical, temperate, or colder regions, and from the information he 
receives relative to this particular, determines whether to place them in the stove 
or greenhouse, or in the open ground ; but he too frequently neglects to seek any 
further intelligence with regard to the humidity or dryness of the localities in which 
they are found, or whether they are most abundant in exposed situations, or delight 
in shady and retired positions, where the more immediate rays of the sun never 
reach them. We repeat that these points are too often overlooked or neglected by 
gardeners and others, and the consequence is, that a number of plants of the most 
contrary habits are crowded together in our stoves and greenhouses, and as all 
receive the same or a similar mode of treatment, a few to which that particular 
treatment chances to be appropriate thrive well, grow vigorously, and produce 
their flowers in perfection, while the majority of them are found to maintain a 
sickly and unhealthy appearance, and after struggling for a longer or shorter period 
against adverse agents, or languishing for genial and beneficial influences, ulti- 
mately die off unexpectedly, and almost imperceptibly, w^ithout any apparent cause. 
With no tribe of plants perhaps is this injurious and erroneous system more 
frequently practised, or productive of more fatal effects, than with that large and 
