ECONOMY IN FLORICULTURE, 
231 
Another mode in which heat gets superfluously consumed in winter is by the 
ill regulation — or rather, the total want of regulation — of the supply of water to 
plants in houses at different periods. At that part of the year when, as we have 
said, vegetation asks more heat than it usually gets where man can control it, a 
greater amount of moisture is also called for. There is rarely, indeed, any lack of 
this, as far as the roots of the plants are the receivers ; but far more is demanded 
in the atmosphere of all kinds of houses while plants are growing than is ordinarily 
given. A moist, close air, is of vital consequence to plants while they are forming 
their young parts ; and its adequate supply at that time will materially affect 
their capacity for thriving without winter heat. 
As autumn draws on again, considerably less moisture— both to the roots and in 
the air — is needed for plants ; and this fact is of yet more moment in relation to 
their winter temperature. Moreover, still farther on in the season, and from the 
end of October to the middle of March, their wants of a fluid character have 
scarcely an existence. They delight in comparative dryness, which promotes their 
torpidity, and enables them to elaborate the juices they had previously imbibed 
and formed. It is in this part of the treatment of exotics with respect to water 
that cultivators are most seriously wrong or careless in practice. ■■ 
The difference between a plant in winter and one in spring, with regard to the 
food it requires, is similar to that between a human being kept constantly in a 
state of inertness and repose, and one in the full exercise of every physical power. 
To feed the one to anything like the same extent as the other, would certainly 
engender disease. 
In winter, a plant merely lives. In spring, it lives and grows. It is the 
latter function for which so much fluid is demanded ; while, for the maintenance 
of mere life, a very small quantity suffices. 
Since it is chiefly to dissipate accumulated moisture that any extra heat is to 
be desired in winter, it follows that, where fluids have only been given sparingly, 
and as a matter of necessity, through the autumn, and where they are hardly at 
all furnished, from the close of that season till the arrival of spring, one of the main 
excuses for artificial heat is entirely cut off. And hence, it is in the power of 
every culturist to save much fuel annually by attention — sedulous attention — to 
this trifling circumstance. 
Various minor points in the routine of exotic cultivation contribute to augment 
or diminish the quantity of heat which must be kept up in winter. Wherever, 
from unavoidable external conditions, a plant grows unnecessarily, and for the 
second time, in the autumn, — and this is a case which will be frequent with the 
best practitioners, — the amount of moisture in the house where many such plants 
are kept will be sensibly altered, according as young growth of that character is 
cut off or suffered to remain ; and, as before asserted, the temperature will have 
to be determined by the hygrometric state of the atmosphere. To remove all 
autumn-formed shoots, therefore, or to prune them down to within two or three 
