16 ON ARRANGING PLANTS IN CONSERVATORIES. 
the appellation of greenhouse plants, and these are for the most part unfit 
for culture. 
The quality of a compost is, perhaps, more influential than its depth. Acting 
on some ridiculous principle, which we have always been unable to discover, the 
transplanter of exotics gives his plants a more nutritive earth when their roots have 
nothing to check them than when they are confined by a pot. A proceeding 
directly the reverse of this, would be far more consonant with reason ; for the 
luxuriance which a plant naturally attains on being transferred to an unencumbered 
bed of soil requires repressing instead of encouraging. We therefore advise that 
a poorer earth be used in conservatories than that given to the same species 
while in pots. 
Regarding what we have called the position of the soil in borders, we may 
observe, that we mean the height of its surface relatively to that of the walks. In 
making beds or borders, the compost being put in lightly, subsequently sinks two 
or three inches if there is a considerable body of it. Cases of this description have 
occurred within our knowledge, in which, after the earth has duly settled, it is on a 
level with, or even lower than, the paths. To do away with its disagreeable 
appearance, (for nothing looks much worse than a border below the general level,) 
and also, as was fancied, to render the soil drier, a coating of two or three inches of 
fresh earth was applied, and thus the roots were buried a proportionate distance 
beneath the surface. All are aware of the bad effects of planting tender plants too 
deeply ; and consequently a border should ever be made sufficiently high at first to 
admit of its sinking to the estimated amount, and then remaining fully three or four 
inches above the walk. 
The fallacy of placing new soil on a plot in order to guard the plants it already 
contains against a superfluity of water, would not need exposing were the expedient 
not sometimes resorted to. It may be done with the avowed end of rendering the 
border drier ; but, of course, the state of the border is of no consequence beyond the 
manner in which it affects the plants growing in it. Other motives may be improved 
appearance, or the imaginary benefit of the plants, by having a new and more 
nutritive soil ; but in all cases it operates most harmful^ on the specimens, by 
making the earth about them really much wetter, and removing their roots from the 
indispensable influence of the atmosphere. If, then, it be needful to raise the bed, 
the plants should be equally and simultaneously elevated, so that their roots may be 
spread out near the top. 
An evil of yet greater magnitude than proceeds from inattention to the soil, 
attends a want of proper forethought in the selection of species and specimens fit 
for planting. In instances without number, the contents of a conservatory depend 
wholly on the plants which the proprietor happens to possess at the period of 
planting, or which his friends or neighbours can readily spare. All the large 
specimens that have become too lofty or too rambling for other houses, are taken 
at once to the conservatory, where, it is unnecessary to add, they soon smother the 
