GARDENING AS A SCIENCE. 
35 
dark situations, and ought to complete its growth in fifteen months ; but as. re- 
gards many of our most beautiful stove exotics, we know that neither growth 
nor health need be injured by a night temperature of 50° to 55° ; and as to the 
Fine, we have only to recite two circumstances in order to prove to what exten- 
sive transitions it may, with impunity, be subjected. 
Early in the month of April, in one of those parching, frosty springs, of which 
so many have occurred since 1834, we were told of a large Yinery under early 
forcing, that was expected to mature its crop in May. The gardener was well 
known as a clever and veracious man ; and reliance would be placed on his state- 
ments. He had been working, as it were, against wind and tide, and also under 
the stimulus of competition, with a neighbour, who, in a low, close stove, had 
urged Ms trees by a temperature of 80 \ We learned from the former, that he 
commenced at 60°, had raised his heat by fire, first, to about 65°, then 70° and 
75°, — by day and by night. 
On the day alluded to, with the fruit in apparently fine condition, the foliage 
ample, broad and verdant, the first thing that caught our eye was a great number 
of broken quarries, the air pouring through the apertures in strong currents, upon 
leaves and clusters indiscriminately. The foreman was appealed to on the subject, 
and his attention called to the apparent risk incurred. He replied — that there 
might be some danger, but that this was nothing to what had occurred on one cold 
night a week before ; when, by the snapping of a cord, an upper large sasli had 
slided down completely to the ground, the circumstance not being discovered till 
the men came to work in the following morning. Upon inspection of the Vine, 
no difference, no discolouration, could be detected in that portion of it which had, 
perhaps, been exposed for hours. When the gardener himself joined us, we 
claimed the admission that if the Grape Vine could sustain a sudden depression 
of temperature of at least 40°, the high degree of heat excited by the flue must 
be useless during the nights ! The gardener distinctly asserted that 70° or 75° 
were required to carry on without check the processes of early forcing ; thus hood- 
winking his judgment by the prejudice of routine, and closing his eyes against 
the evidence of positive facts, even at a moment when a cold current of 40° was 
pouring through more than a dozen apertures in different parts of the roof! 
Argument in such cases must be thrown away ; but our discerning readers will 
be alive to proofs so demonstrative ; and these we shall corroborate by stating 
another circumstance more recent, and yet more palpable. 
Most persons who observe the weather, will be able to retrace the fearful 
hurricane of January 26, 1842, which raged with its utmost fury from six to seven 
o'clock in the evening of that day. At that time our early Yinery exhibited all 
its clusters : the highest temperature by fire had never exceeded 68°, and that by 
night fell to 60° and 62°. Just as the storm began to subside, or rather under the 
influence of the last gust, which sounded like a billow struggling against some 
powerful impediment, the shaft of the flue-chimney gave way, and some of the 
