PRESERVATION OF FLOWER-GARDEN PLANTS IN WINTER, J83 
house closed as occasion may require, only contributes towards evolving. Plants 
preserved under such treatment as the foregoing, would be more favourably situated 
when kept in large cutting-pots or pans, for then they are much less liable to 
be subjected to the alternations of excessive drought and wet, and the little water 
necessary for them, can be given more conveniently at much less risk of it 
occasioning the plants injury, or of itself being the origination of evil. 
In cold frames it is seldom thought of keeping any plants but such as are known 
to be hardy ; and even those, from the indiscriminate manner they are watered when 
they seem to require it, and also from being often exposed, to an unlimited degree, 
to the injurious influence of wet, are not found in spring the robust plants in rude 
health they ought to be. 
It is not more requisite that plants under shelter should be otherwise than 
dormant, to insure their preservation, when that is the only object in view, than 
those in the open air ; the latter are kept so, notwithstanding to however great 
extent wet may prevail, by the cold to which they are subject, but tender plants cut 
off from such checks to their vegetative powers being called into action, and being, 
though for the most part unintentionally, furnished with those conditions favourable 
to their developing growth, it is impossible they can continue dormant ; hence is 
moisture, in conjunction with the means taken to protect plants from frost, the chief 
agent in inducing them to grow, and in that way expending their usefulness, at the 
same time rendering them peculiarly open to injury from frost, and by its presence 
facilitating freezing attacks taking effect. 
A very convincing and instructive proof of how little actual fluid is necessary for 
the support of vegetable life in winter, is sometimes accidentally afforded by a branch 
of some evergreen, often a very small portion, observable in a living, perfectly 
fresh condition, upon the surface of the ground, throughout the whole autumn and 
winter ; the same kind of evidence may be seen in the circumstance of shoots of 
Willows and other easily-rooting things striking after similar and equal exposure. 
Herbaceous plants, too, which furnish a hard argument in favour of our ideas, may 
frequently be met with ; those in light soil, and perhaps accidentally sheltered from 
rain by an adjoining friendly bush, by their strength and formidable readiness to 
rush into growth in spring, strongly contrast with such as are unfortunate enough 
to be located on a border of heavy soil, and consequently one wonderfully retentive 
of moisture, and exposed to all that falls, their whole organization continually 
enfeebling, and perishing by degrees, and the blanched vegetation they endeavour to 
put forth when the season for activity again returns. Instances might be greatly 
multiplied which would illustrate the point in question : take further the hardy 
health and general sturdiness of plants on high and rocky ground, and even wholly 
on rocks, and it will be found they are seemingly active, and even growing, in pro- 
portion as they are free from moisture ; the vivid hue of evergreens growing in a 
dry situation, compared with the yellow appearance and sickly aspect of such as are 
injured by the superabundance of moisture they happen to be in contact with, &c. 
