226 
SUCCULENT PLANTS. 
There exists in the vegetable creation a constant tendency to imbibe the food 
most congenial to its wants ; and where a supply is always furnished, provided the 
atmospheric conditions be at all favourable, a perpetual accretion will be maintained. 
Still, as long reflection is necessary to produce advantageous results from the 
accession to the mind of a large amount of information ; so, a period in which the 
juices may be duly distributed, assimilated, and solidified, is equally indispensable 
to fertility in plants. When the energies, either of the human intellect or of a 
plant, are incessantly devoted to the acquisition of extraneous matter, nothing will 
be matured, nothing perfected, and there cannot, consequently, be any worthy 
product. 
The applicability of the above observation will speedily be perceived. Although 
the provision of a somewhat enriched soil, and the administration of a liberal 
quantity of moisture, is undoubtedly beneficial to Epiphylla at a certain point of 
their existence, — indeed, throughout the whole period of their growth, properly so 
called, — a too continuous inhalation of nutriment subverts the purpose for which 
they are cultivated, and prevents the elaboration of their inflorescence. Hence ? 
while it is advisable to step rather beyond the bounds which Nature has partly 
prescribed in a few cases, it becomes of peculiar moment that the broad line of 
demarcation which she has marked out between the seasons should be regarded, 
and the great principles which characterize her procedure preserved in full force. 
To particularise more explicitly, we must pass to the chief items in the culture 
of Epiphylla. It is of comparatively little consequence what kind of material is 
used for potting or planting them in, or whether they are placed in pots or wire- 
baskets, so long as their roots are fairly covered with something which will dry 
readily, in order to give facility for keeping them arid in the autumnal and winter 
months. With adequate security on these heads, they may even be attached, with 
thorough impunity, to a piece of rough wood fastened to the wall, suspended from 
the roof, or having its base plunged in the bed of the house, and enveloped in 
sphagnum-moss. Such a mode would be well adapted for Epiphyllum speciosum, 
some other very flat-leaved species, and Cereus flagelllformis. They would 
constitute a novel and highly-interesting feature in an orchidaceous-house for the 
summer season, and might be removed from thence to a drier department in the 
autumn. 
Wire, wooden, or any other rustic baskets, might, again, be employed with 
propriety for the same and similar plants ; merely filling them with sphagnum, 
intermingled or not with potsherds, according to the grower s pleasure. We have 
repeatedly had the opportunity of observing that the roots of all Cactacese, when 
surrounded by moss instead of soil, have been more abundant and healthy ; and are 
impressed with the conviction that sphagnum is a very suitable medium for these 
plants, since it will admit of being saturated with moisture, or entirely divested 
of it. Only one impediment to its general adoption seems to us of any import — 
which is, that its appearance is more deceptive than that of earth, a close examina- 
