Cultivation of Greenhouse and Stove Ferns . 97 
kinds of flowering plants may be grown in the same 
houses with ferns, if the selection is made judiciously 
in the first instance, and the best positions as to air, 
light, &c., are selected for them. Thus, as to sorts it 
will be found that camellias, azaleas, cyclamens, pri¬ 
mulas, liliums, oleas, and statices, are well adapted to 
associate with greenhouse ferns, if the sunniest positions 
are assigned them; on the other hand, heaths, pelar¬ 
goniums, echeverias, epiphyllums, boronias, epacris, 
and kalosanthes, are far less suitable, needing more 
air and sunshine than most ferns could endure without 
injury. It must be remembered, however, that many 
beautiful plants, such as palms, for example, may be 
grown with ferns to afford variety, and the same routine 
of treatment will suit both. In the stove it is common 
enough to find achimenes, gloxinias, alocascias, cala- 
diums, begonias, gesneras, and marantas, associated 
with ferns without the least injury to either. Yet in the 
full blaze of sunshine, where a croton or an ixora would 
thrive, it would be almost impossible for a fern to live, 
except in the form of a disgrace to its possessor. So 
far we see that compromises are possible. There is 
yet another mode of associating ferns and flowering 
plants in the same house, and that is to make banks 
and rockeries beneath the stages where shade and 
humidity will favour the growth of ferns, and render 
positions otherwise useless and unsightly as attractive 
nearly as the stages themselves, on which the amaryllids 
or the pelargoniums are blooming bravely. A bank of 
peat faced with large burrs answers admirably for a 
fernery of this sort, and the varieties of cystopteris, 
7 
