THE ELOEAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 
37 
week for fresh ones from the conservatory, if you can, and turn 
them round every day, so that all sides may have the benefit of 
light equally. Never by any means allow them to get dry. The 
air in a room is always dry and arid, causing the moisture in the 
ball of the plant to dry up very quickly. If it ever happens that 
you allow the ball of a plant to get so dry that the soil shrinks from 
the pot all round, the best way to moisten the soil thoroughly again 
is to stand the pot nearly up to the rim in a vessel of water for half 
an hour or so. 
Often I have seen poor ill-treated plants returning to the green- 
house they had left so fresh and beautiful, looking as limp and dried 
up as if the hot breath of a furnace had swept over them, and as 
begrimed with dust as if they had travelled a dusty road for a long 
summer’s day. Plants neglected thus have their beauty spoiled for 
a whole season, when a little more care and attention bestowed on 
them would have returned them little the worse for their change of 
quarters. 
Plants in rooms are usually placed in flats or pans for the 
superfluous water to collect in. This water should never he allowed 
to remain, as it tends to sour the ball of the plant by too much 
moisture and exclusion of air from the roots. 
When arranging plants in ornamental flower-stands a good bold 
specimen plant should be chosen for the centre, and the smaller 
ones grouped tastefully around it with a free unrestricted natural 
grace, and all stiff formal arrangements should be avoided. This 
can best be done by a judicious mixture of graceful ferns. No 
other kind of plants break stiff outlines and bring out graceful 
effects so well as they. When trailing plants are used, they are 
better allowed to grow in their natural way than trained over globe 
or lan-shaped trellises. When trained in this fashion, on trellises, 
they have a stiff unnatural appearance, far from pleasing to the eye 
of taste. 
Small single specimens of fine foliage plants are excellent for 
brackets on the walls, such as Crotons, Begonio.s, Dracaenas, Cala- 
diums, Ficus, and many others ; also ferns, mosses, and flowering 
plants. The common Ivy is the best of all trailing plants for the 
decoration of rooms and passages by means of brackets. A con- 
tinuous wreath can be carried along a wall in this way ; or it may 
be draped around the window recess, or formed into screens for the 
drawing-room by being planted in ornamental boxes and trained 
over a wire trellis. 
On the floor in the window recess, and in the empty fire-places, 
during summer, tasteful ferneries can be got up. In a fire-place 
especially, a natural screen of ferns, palms, and such like, is far 
before any other contrivance we see used for the same purpose ; 
and if a small lead pipe be laid on from the water supply, a pretty 
little fountain can be had to play among the plants. 
In the arranging of cut flowers in vases or trumpet glasses, you 
should always avoid using too many flowers. This is where a great 
many err ; they crowd in flower after flower indiscriminately, and 
the result is a confused clumsy mass. Crowding of flowers should 
February. 
