182 PRESERVATION OF FLOWER-GARDEN PLANTS IN WINTER. 
which would not be injurious, but in every respect beneficial to the plants, as we 
shall presently show. It should first be ascertained whether the erection in which 
they are to be preserved is properly dry, or at least can be rendered quite so at 
pleasure ; if it has the advantage of being furnished with a heating apparatus, no 
difficulty can arise from this source, and if not, it is easy to render it perfect in this 
respect, with the aid of the autumn suns, previous to the period for stowing the 
plants away ; once in a correct condition, it is a matter of choice how long it is 
maintained so. In watering the plants care should be taken that they never have more 
applied to them each time it is given than is actually required; and it should be so 
seldom administered that it ought to be the rule to withhold it from them, and the 
exception to administer it. Such a manner of treating plants would not be the 
practice of fanciful notions respecting them, unsuited to their welfare, but the 
carrying out a principle which is not sufficiently regarded, and indeed can only be 
understood by those who have had some experience as to the extent plants will live 
and continue healthy in a cool dry atmosphere. It must be borne in mind, its cool- 
ness in conjunction with comparative drought is an essential point that should not be 
lost sight of ; were it a dry atmosphere and dry state of things alone that were 
required, no difficulty would be experienced in furnishing them by the agency of fire; 
but drying influences without some degree of moisture would be equally destructive 
from opposite causes to those which, it is the burden of our complaint, are generally 
the source of extensive mischief. 
The first care should be to maintain the plants in good health, and next, to 
guard them from all hurtful influences ; little skill is required to effect the first 
attainment : the plants need only be left alone, and Nature will accomplish the 
remainder, by descending into comparatively a completely inactive state. That the 
effect of general practices is almost wholly opposed to such principles can easily be 
shown. Take, for example, the treatment the class of plants in question are 
subjected to at the period of which we write ; usually they are favoured with green- 
house room : they are small plants in small pots, and therefore by some means 
must be elevated as near the glass as possible, that they may not suffer from 
darkness and damp. If they are the more succulent kinds, their usefulness is 
destroyed, and they themselves exhausted in unnecessary growth, developed by the 
too great warmth they experience in their situation. Hard-wooded plants fare 
differently, but not better; the conditions they experience are not favourable to their 
making growth, but the incitement to do so those conditions occasion, dries up the 
principle of life. Under such circumstances they require a considerable quantity of 
water, which is given, apart from the inconvenience of applying it, at great risk of 
ill effects ensuing from so much moisture being employed in the winter season, not 
perhaps to the plants to which it is administered — and to maintain which alive it is 
necessary — but to those it may come in contact with after escaping from the first, 
or from it at all finding a lodgement, thence furnishing a source whence a continual 
stream of damp rises, which the application of artificial warmth or keeping the 
