ON ARRANGING PLANTS IN CONSERVATORIES. 13 
The principles incidentally alluded to in these remarks on a particular plant, are 
of recognised application to the majority of bulbs, which, as all are aware, never 
grow so freely unless the upper portion be just buried beneath the earth. As, 
however, planting them too deeply would have a very bad effect, by rendering them 
unprolific of blossoms, the safest practice is to leave the tip of the crown exposed 
or close to the surface. In their more artificial culture, the evils of either extreme 
are much aggravated ; which leads us to explain that all Gesneraceous plants, with 
tuberous roots, are governed by an analogous law, and that by letting their top 
surface remain uncovered, (as is the custom in some gardens,) the quantity of their 
stems and flowers is invariably diminished, or these are sensibly weakened. Our 
attention has been repeatedly arrested by two specimens of Gesnera with equally 
large tubers, the one having one or two feeble flowering stems, and the other five 
or six vigorous ones, though treated exactly alike, with the exception of the tuber 
of the former being placed far higher in the pot. The happy medium is, 
unquestionably, that which we have indicated in speaking of bulbs. 
It would be improper to pass from this subject without adding that, where the 
object is to enlarge the size of the tuber, and to accumulate therein resources for a 
future period of peculiar luxuriance or splendour — sacrificing two or three years' 
beauty to the accomplishment of this end — no means are more likely to promote it 
than those we have above condemned in the cases where actual and immediate 
effect was desired. 
ON ARRANGING AND PLANTING SPECIMENS IN 
CONSERVATORIES. 
A conservatory, properly speaking, is either a greenhouse or stove, and 
simply a building devoted to the preservation and culture of exotic vegetation, 
without any regard to the temperature at which it is maintained. But in the 
language of gardeners -and floriculturists generally, the term has a far more exclusive 
application ; and is employed to designate those structures which are kept at about 
the same average heat as a greenhouse, while they are rather larger than ordinary 
greenhouses, and are composed, internally, of beds and borders, in which the 
principal part of the specimens intended to be grown are planted. 
To the last definition we propose adhering in the remarks now to be offered. 
It is of no inconsiderable moment in horticulture, as in every other science, that the 
phrases in common use should be explicit, and bear one universal meaning ; and we 
do not know how the word conservatory can be better applied (considering the 
established signification of the term greenhouse) than in denominating the edifices 
in which plants are cultivated in the natural manner — .i e., in a comparatively 
unlimited mass or body of earth ; discarding altogether its reference to such buildings 
