SUCCULENT PLANTS. 
253 
are provided, to prevent them from becoming too moist, and to fit them for existing 
in security through the winter, as well as for developing their inflorescence. 
Seeing, then, the indispensability of an unusual amount of solar light, it will 
immediately be evident that the only way of meeting the demand is by constructing 
a house, the roof of which shall contain as much glass, and as little wood or other 
material, as is consistent with strength and durability. To effect this, the 
description of glass so extensively employed in the recent horticultural erections at 
Chatsworth, and which is in pieces or panes of about three feet in length, will be 
of admirable service ; as not merely a greater stream of light is thus admitted, but 
the old evil of drippings from the laps of the glass can be entirely avoided. Such 
a preventive of one of the bad consequences resulting from the former methods of 
glazing, would necessarily be of enormous advantage to the plants here treated of ; 
because they receive greater detriment from the casual falling of water on them in 
the winter, than from almost any other source ; being of a nature so well calculated 
to retain it in their most susceptible parts. 
To speak, next, of the temperature in which succulents of this habitude will 
flourish most satisfactorily, it is on this head, mainly, that we have detached them 
from the rest. The tropical kinds of Cactacece need, as we have shown, a 
somewhat high temperature during the summer months ; and the Epiphylla 
likewise delight in a moderate heat, superior, at least, to that which can be 
obtained in a greenhouse. But for the present class, the ratio of heat which 
is generally bestowed on Cape Heaths is amply sufficient. This declaration is, we 
know, at variance with the common practice of cultivators, who imprudently 
arrange the whole of their succulents in one house, simply placing the hardiest 
species in the cooler positions, some of which are mostly to be found in structures 
that are heated by flues, and even in those through which hot water circulates. 
Rather than so mix plants which have no real affinity except in their succulent 
nature, and expose one part of the collection to injury from the modification of 
temperature which is requisite for the accommodation of the remainder, and the 
other part to a like degree of harm from the same cause ; where an adequate number 
is not kept to need two houses, we would have shelves placed along the fronts or 
other conspicuous portions of greenhouses, where the present group might be 
treated according to their character, and the Cactaceous sorts alone be retained in 
the succulent-house. Or if the Cacti were removed annually to hotbed frames, as 
we have recommended, there would then be no objection to the assemblage of all 
the succulents that are possessed in one structure ; since this could be managed 
precisely as a greenhouse at the other periods of the year. 
Wherever Aloes and the species of related genera are conserved, the heat 
of the house should range from the temperature of summer to that of winter, with 
the changes of the seasons ; merely being just as much above that of the outer air 
in warm weather as is unavoidable from the existence of a glass covering, and 
always rather more than forty degrees Fahrenheit in the severest winter weather, 
