234 
FACTS, HINTS, AND EXPERIMENTS ON THE MANAGEMENT OF 
it can have all the supposed advantages of excessive light, and he will find that whj 
we have said is perfectly true. Scores of other greenhouse plants might he met 
tioned which obey the same law, and until our collectors describe the exact positio ; 
in which they find the plants, such as whether in light or shady situations, or dam] 
or dry, or high, or low, we shall continue to grope our way to success in the sam 
state of happy ignorance. 
Of plants which grow in the most admirable and satisfactory manner during th 
winter season no stronger illustration can be adduced than that of the genu 
Pimelea. These plants will do more in three months during the dull weather ( 
winter and early in spring than they can be made to do in six months at any othe 
time of the year. Indeed, during the hot, dry w 7 eather of summer, it is almos 
impossible to induce them to make anything like healthy and vigorous progress, eve 
though they be placed behind a north wall, and every endeavour he made to rende 
the situation as suitable to them as possible, by sprinkling, shading, and bringing int 
play all the devices generally employed to generate a moist, healthy, and growin 
atmosphere. These plants, especially the more delicate ones, such as P. rosed 
Hendersonia, hispida, dc., seem to hate a hot situation and an unclouded sky; bu 
place them in a cool and rather damp pit, where, with a free interchange of air, the 
can, from the end of September to the return of spring, be kept at a temperature c 
about 40° to 45°, and where the atmosphere can be kept sufficiently moist, but nc| 
wet, and they will grow with vigour unknown to them in any other situation. Th 
reason of this is, that these plants under powerful light produce flower-buds almos 
before they have made shoots half-an-inch long, and hence they cannot grow ; bui 
place them under circumstances where the flowering principle is placed in abeyance 
or excite them at a season when the sun’s rays impinge upon our earth at ai 
oblique angle and there is a want of bright light, — the growing principle is alon 
excited, and the result will be progress of a very satisfactory kind. Plants thu 
treated may be stopped five or six times in the course of the winter, and will eaclt 
time produce abundance of vigorous shoots, but in the summer it is almost impossible 
to get them to produce two shoots where they will send forth six or eight ai 
this season. I 
This, I have no doubt, will appear a very singular doctrine to many, but more 
especially to that class of cultivators who would make plants rest during the winter 
whether they are disposed to do so or not, merely because such treatment accord! 
with their preconceived notions of what, theoretically, we are taught to considet 
right. Practice however tells us that general rules in gardening, as in every otheij 
branch of knowledge are subject to exceptions, and the observant cultivator who uses 
his eyes as well as his head, will require very little experience to discover that many 
plants which he has looked upon as difficult to cultivate under general rules will 
grow with great freedom if he assists them at the time when they appear most’ 
inclined to assist themselves. 
It will always be found that the most difficult plants to cultivate make an attempt 
