THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN'S COMPANION, February 17,1857. 337 
coming to such generalising conclusions, if we do not 
make the season the great scape goat for carrying away 
out of sight and out of mind our own errors and short- 
j comings. A failure is not an unmitigated evil when we 
I have sense enough to use it as the sign-post and the 
i preventive of future danger. Experience may thus be 
! a harsh schoolmaster; but, once possessed of the benefits 
j of instruction, we look back very pleasantly upon the 
severe floggings. Failures with many never become 
experience, because, never suspecting anything in their 
own practice, they complacently lay the blame of all 
unpleasant results upon something or other wholly 
beyond their control; and among these somethings, with 
our gardening friends, what more serviceable than the 
changeableness of the season? 
Window Plants. —There is “ Mary Anne ” more 
wroth with the season than ever I should have supposed 
5 her gentle nature could be wroth with anything. Her 
plants in her parlour window were worthy of her care. I 
daresay she never knew that people noticed them. Even 
if she had she could not have treated them better, for 
she loved them for their own sake. Others have noticed 
that even heavy, earthy, cool, calculating folks, with no 
appreciations but for the materially useful, and who 
would stretch themselves into an inch or two of 
additional importance as they told you they held the 
views of the great Dr. Johnson, and of all flowers in the 
garden preferred the Cauliflower—even they would 
lag, and take slower and shorter steps as they passed 
our favourite’s window—the uprisings of the natural 
sense of the beautiful triumphing for the moment over 
their leaden, utilitarian philosophy. And there were 
others of a more kindred spirit, and with all the buoyant 
feelings of youthdom, who, but for shame, would have 
stood and gazed upon the plants until, by a natural 
transition, they would get into dream-land about what 
I sort of a little, trim, neat, orderly fairy it could be that 
thus marked the strong features of her own character on 
the beautiful plants before them. Alas! the plants are 
no longer in. the window—their leaves have been frost¬ 
bitten, and must be hospitaled for a time, if ever they 
regain their former freshness. We quite feel for the 
mishap, and we sympathise with Mary Anne in every¬ 
thing except her repining and fretting about the extreme 
and sudden changes of the weather as the cause of the 
misfortune. The weather, it is true, had been somewhat 
regular for a few days, the temperature ranging at 
night from 38° to 43°, and the plants were quite safe, 
i Mary Aune goes from home for a night, gives no 
directions about the plants to meet contingencies, and in 
the morning the pots are firm in their saucers, with a 
! thermometer outside the window at 23°. Had the 
! plants been moved at bedtime to the farther side of the 
i row not a leaf would have been touched. I must say 
I that the variations in weather and temperature have 
; been more than ordinarily sudden and extreme; but 
these variations it is useless to blame, because wo cannot 
influence them, though we have it in our power, to a 
great extent, to moderate and neutralise their effects. 
Keeping Greenhouses safely and economically.— 
“ Miss Agnes Careful ” has got into some trouble. A 
; number of her plants, close to the front of the house, got 
| frosted the other night. She takes the whole responsi¬ 
bility of giving directions as to firing, &c., uses the house 
chiefly for preserving bedding plants in winter, and, 
| alike for their benefit and the saving of fuel, never makes 
: a fire except when absolutely necessary, and just to keep 
the frost out. “The day before the mischief was done was 
dull and drizzly—temperature out of doors about 38°, 
and a few degrees warmer in the house. During the 
evening the sky became clear and the stars beautifully 
j bright, the wind, what little there was, veering from east 
i to north; but still by bedtime the thermometer out of 
doors had not come to 33°, and safety was therefore pre¬ 
dicted. Are not these rapid changes worrying? At 
eight in the morning the outside thermometer was 24°, 
and the inside a little below 30°, and the plants near the 
glass, and those that were particularly moist, suffered, 
while those that were drier and farthest from the glass 
escaped. That teasing Mr. Edwards says it is no use 
blaming the season or its changes, and I think it is too 
bad after all the trouble and care I have taken. VI ell, 
I think so too, and if you ever give me tn e chance I will 
not hesitate to give Mr. Edwards a bit of juy rmnd on 
that subject. There is nothing very magnanitu. 0US li 1 
twitting you as the cause of your disappointment. 
would have been more manly in him to have mollified it 
down, and, if he could have done nothing more, to have 
cheered you with bright visions of future success. We 
should have had no patience with him if you had at all 
blamed yourself in the affair, because a felt want ot seen 
deficiency is such a sure passport to future superiority. 
If you had honourably confessed at once to any short¬ 
coming on your part, I should consider it very ill-natured 
in Mr. Edwards to do anything but kindly sympathise 
with you. But are you quite sure that you did not throw 
rather too much blame on the weather, and too little on 
your want of forethought? In either case you may 
easily be up hands with Mr. Edwards, and that is to set 
him to make a brisk little fire whenever the thermometer 
in the evening gets to 35° and the stars are shining 
brightly. Who knows but that he would be so pleased to 
do that or anything else about which you expressed a 
wish, that he would never breathe a word about a mis¬ 
chance for the future? In general circumstances a 
briskisli fire would heat the house a little before the 
frost had obtained admission, and less fire will do if the 
heat begins to act upon the house before its temperature 
is greatly lowered. With such symptoms it is always 
desirable to light a small brisk fire. Before bedtime 
you will be able to decide whether to put a little more 
on or allow it to go out. It is impossible to combine at 
the same time the extreme of the economical and the 
extreme as respects safety, if we mean to have many 
hours’ sleep at a time in cold, changeable weather. For 
instance, from six to eight it suddenly becomes cold and 
frosty, and as the sky is clear, encouraging the free radi¬ 
ation of heat from everything exposed to it, we light a 
brisk fire, though the house bo a degree or two above 
40°; from nine o’clock the sky becomes as suddenly 
cloudy, and could we have predicted that, and still fur¬ 
ther predicted the continuance of the clouds, it is very 
probable no fire would have been lighted. But, sup¬ 
posing we had lighted no fire,and were priding ourselves 
on our prudential foresight in finding the house quite 
safe, and such a canopy of clouds, likely to last till 
morning, that there could be little more cold from radia¬ 
tion of heat, but that, nevertheless, these clouds passed 
away as suddenly as they came while we slept, and Jack 
Frost seized on our best favourites, where would be our 
boasted economy and foresight then? The one brisk 
fire sufficient to heat the heating medium would, in such 
a case, have insured safety, have enabled us to sleep 
without distracting care about our tender proteges, and 
even if the morning was much warmer than the evening, 
would not bo lost, but be useful for drying the house, 
promoting a draught or circulation of air in it, and if the 
day was at all fine, permitting of opening the ventilators 
more. 
For all such low-temperatured houses a constant fire 
will never be wanted unless in continued severe frosts, 
and seldom even then unless the houses are of large size. 
Sharp, sudden frosts are the most dangerous, and there¬ 
fore, whatever the mode of heating—flues, hot water, 
cast metal, or zinc pipes, &c.—it is important that the heat 
be quickly communicated. Large thick flues, and large 
pipes containing much water, are all well enough where 
less or more of continuous heat is required, because, 
