46 
PLANTS IN ROOMS. 
Persons attending to the foregoing remarks will 
find a good deal of the difficulty of cultivating Plants 
removed, the secret of which consists in giving them 
light and air, and letting the pots be proportioned to 
e size of the Plant with sufficient soil for them to 
grow in, not keeping them too long in small pots after 
they have done flowering as they are apt to get stinted 
in their growth. In watering them, give them suffi¬ 
cient at a time to wet their roots to the bottom of the 
pot, but do not keep them saturated all the time, nor 
suffer them to wilt for want of it, and keep them clean 
from dust on their leaves, as it stops their pores and 
makes them turn yellow and sickly, and such Plants 
as require support should be tied up with neat sticks, 
and all straggling shoots should be cut off to keep 
the Plant in a handsome shape. 
Where Plants have been attended to, I have fre¬ 
quently seen as fine or finer specimens of them grow¬ 
ing in a room window than in a Greenhouse, the rea¬ 
son of which may be attributed to the greater care a 
few Plants can receive in a room than is practicable 
in a Greenhouse, and as coal is much used, there is 
less danger of frost getting in the house at night, but 
if the atmosphere of the room is dry, it will benefit 
the Plant to sponge the leaves with clean water occa¬ 
sionally, and keep the surface of the soil clean from 
filth, wiping the outside of the pot occasionally, for 
the moisture often causes foulness to gather on the 
pot which stops evaporation. 
