STOVE AQUARIUMS. 
Ill 
intricate ; none is more delightful during its acquisition ; from no subject, when 
thoroughly within the grasp, can a higher degree of pleasure result ; and nothing 
is better calculated to exert an exalting influence on his taste and mental powers, 
or to assist him more powerfully in compassing the higher branches of his profession. 
No person, indeed, can ever aspire to landscape-gardening without an acquaintance 
with architecture. 
If, in this paper, we* have dealt largely with principles, and merely negative 
statements, it is because we intend plunging deeper into the details, and explaining 
our opinions of what garden architecture ought to be, in one or more subsequent 
papers. 
STOVE AQUAHIUMS. 
In how few of even our first-rate floricultural establishments any effort is made 
to cultivate stove aquatics on a scale adequate to their great merits, or in a manner 
likely to ensure success, is matter of common remark. The real grounds of such 
inattention cannot, we should imagine, be so generally known and felt, or they 
would more speedily be removed. 
A notion has long been current, and, as in similar cases where a preconceived 
prejudice is flattered, has gained considerable credence, that exotics of this 
description do not ordinarily flower abundantly enough to warrant their more 
frequent culture. But if the treatment bestowed be at all appropriate, nothing- 
can be more unfounded than that belief. It is true that stove aquatics, like every 
other tribe of plants, will not, under adverse circumstances, develop their flowers 
freely, and sometimes, when similarly checked, do not unfold a single blossom ; 
3^et the same position holds good with many of our most prolific stove ornaments, 
and arguments deduced from thence to prove their want of fertility would be unjust 
and fatuous in the highest degree. 
Another source of the low position these plants occupy in public esteem, is the 
miserable and often dirty condition in which they are commonly witnessed when 
confined to small boxes, cisterns, or tanks, where they have neither room enough 
to perfect their growth, sufficient nutriment to produce flowers, nor the opportunity 
of exhibiting either to advantage. From the limited quantity of soil which can be 
placed in the bottom of such vessels, the trifling surface of v/ater they present, and 
the consequent rapidity with which it evaporates in the summer, thereby frequently 
leaving the plants in a partially dry and flagging state, together with the crowded 
arrangement of the leaves, so detrimental to their appearance and obstructive to 
their functions, it cannot be expected that they should be interesting or gratifying 
when so treated. 
The point, however, which most of all has contributed to weaken their influ- 
