PHILOSOPHY OF FLORICULTURE. 
203 
the production of seed, whether by cross impregnation or other¬ 
wise, may derive a most useful lesson : the heat of the plant for 
show should be diminished along with the dry treatment, because 
this will make the flowers last longer without impairing their 
beauty ; whereas, if the plant is flowered for seed only, the heat 
should be kept up ; because, though the duration of the flowers 
will be much more transient, the perfection and fertility of the 
seeds will be much more certain. We are not sure that many 
florists attend to this in those plants which require much artificial 
treatment ; but we are certain that in neglecting it they very 
much neglect their own interests. 
Where plants are over-watered, or have water given to them at 
times when, according to their habit, they should have none, one 
or other of these results invariably ensues: the plant is either 
macerated and rotted, and dies in whole or in part; or its habit 
becomes changed so as to work chiefly for individual growth, and 
very little for flowering ; and the forced and unnatural shoots 
which it thus makes are far more tender and liable to casualty and 
disease than if it were treated according to its natural habit. Both 
of these results are fatal to the floriculturist; for, by the first of 
them he loses his plant altogether ; and, by the second, he reduces 
it into a condition in which it is unsaleable, and good for nothing 
as a breeder. Bulbs suffer the most from injudicious treatment of 
this kind ; and they suffer more in proportion as they are more 
highly bred and valuable. 
It is natural to suppose that, if any imported or cultivated plant 
is left to the natural circumstances and seasons of the place where 
it is planted, it will either in so far assimilate itself to them, or it 
will perish in the attempt; and it will do the one or the other in 
proportion as there is more or less resemblance between the climate 
and seasons of its native locality and those of that in which it has 
been planted and neglected. We have a striking instance of this 
in the cultivated hyacinth, which, whether it has or has not been 
bred out of the common one, soon degenerates to something very 
like it, if left year after year in the same ground. One has merely 
to examine the ruins of a former garden which have lain long in 
a state of neglect, to be convinced of the truth of what has been 
stated. 
Flowers are most abundant and beautiful in tropical climates ; 
and in all regions of the world, the more tropical the character, 
