86 
CULTURE OP PELARGONIUMS. 
which there will be ample time to harden their wood by judicious exposure, so 
that they be not called to pass through the most rigorous period unprepared. All 
this caution as to temperature and air will, however, be unavailing, unless the 
provision of water be modified accordingly. 
Arrived at the month of November, which, for the sake of convenience, we 
shall regard as the commencement of winter, Pelargonia are then safely stored in 
their assigned quarters, and must have a kind of treatment which it is our design 
now to detail. We have shown the immense importance of solar light to them in 
summer : how much more they need all that can be furnished in winter, will soon 
be obvious. Ligneous shrubs, whose foliage is deciduous, and whose yearly 
enlargements are seldom left immature at the end of autumn, may be stowed away 
through the winter in any dark apartment, over the humidity and temperature of 
which the manager has sufficient control, without experiencing aught injurious. It 
is not so with species of a succulent nature, much less with evergreens, and still less 
with such as have made a second growth in the decline of the year. 
Pelargonia being of the description last-named, must have every ray of light that 
the atmosphere and the roof will transmit. They cannot be too near the latter, 
so that they are not in actual contact with it ; for it is incorrect to suppose, that 
by placing plants at a great distance from the glass, in a compartment not heated 
by artificial means, we proportionally remove them from danger. When frost is 
severe enough to affect a substance within a foot of the roof, it will ever be 
found to commit similar ravages at five times the distance, should nothing besides 
the common air intervene to weaken its violence. Thus, by elevating the plants 
to where they can receive an adequate amount of one element, we do not render 
them obnoxious to the dispersion of a still more vital ingredient in their system. 
Heat is distributed pretty equally through a cold frame, and specimens situated a 
foot from its roof, will be quite secure from all weather that does not impose the 
application of an additional covering. 
If light be an agent that is so much to be desiderated, the direct converse must 
be declared of unnatural heat. To kindle fires for the preservation of these plants, 
is, in our judgment, an admirable method of hastening their destruction. We use 
this strong expression because the evil we are combating is deeply-rooted ; and 
old prejudices not being easily exterminated, we are content to endure the obloquy 
of having given explicit utterance to the naked truth. 
Not to leave our dictum as a handle for the ignorant, it may yet obtain some 
enforcement from an exhibition of the links in the chain of consequences which, 
when associated, produce the result we have mentioned. Fire heat, acting on 
plants for which such a stimulant alone is requisite to set their energies again in 
motion, must indubitably have this effect. The shoots thus excited in the absence 
of light, are attenuated, and become so unhealthy, that when the artificial tempe- 
rature is withdrawn, they are liable to perish from dampness, or from a very 
trifling degree of cold that may afterwards unsuspectedly find admittance. We 
