32 
THE FLORIST’S JOURNAL. 
should be placed in the sun, or in wide and shallow vessels all 
night, in the same house or room with the plants.' If it is colder 
than the plants it chills them ; and, strange though it may seem, 
if it is too warm it chills them also. In the first of these cases, 
the direct application produces the mischief; and in the second, 
the rapid evaporation of the too warm water produces cold, which 
occasions a more injurious chill than even the cold water. This 
also points out the times of the day when no water should be 
given. These are the hottest times of the plant; because at those 
times, both kinds of chilling are brought into operation, and if the 
plants are very delicate, they are apt to receive a check from 
which they never recover ; or if they escape being killed, they 
are sickly, poor, and unsightly, ever after. Water ought never 
to be given to plants while exposed to the rays of the ^un, whether 
it be when they are most heated for the day or no. Nature 
teaches us this; for natural watering always comes from a cloud, 
which cloud intercepts the direct sunbeams, whatever may be the 
temperature of the air. There is another lesson of nature which 
is worth attending to. In the latter part of spring, and in summer, 
rain clouds are usually high, and the drops are large ; whereas, 
in autumn, the clouds are lower and the drops smaller. In 
seasonal countries, especially on the slopes of mountains, within 
the tropics or nearly so, the rain also falls in heavy drops, but 
the water speedily runs off without stagnating, or being to any 
great extent converted into vapour. Such plants should therefore 
be watered from the nose of a pot held at a considerable elevation ; 
and as in an artificial state the water cannot run off from them 
as it does in their natural habitats, the discharge of it must be 
provided for by porous soil, and bottom-drainage. 
Plants which are natives of the low places of tropical countries, 
where the water floods the surface during the rains, and especially 
in close forests, where the ground is continually moist, and ap¬ 
proaching to a marsh, the air is loaded with warm vapour, approach¬ 
ing the character of a fog, and this continues for a while after the 
rain is over, and then the air becomes dry, and continues so until 
the next rains set in. Plants from such situations must, during 
the growing season, be copiously watered, and the house must be 
so warm, and the floors, shelves, and other stands of the plants, so 
moist, as to keep the air within the house humid with vapour. In 
these forests there are very few ground plants, and still fewer 
