NOCTURNAL REPOSE OF PLANTS. 
25 
weather is precarious for exposed plants up to the month of 
May, if we except the more common and hardy ones, which are 
uo great favorites with the florist, and these we have to consider 
as having their natural day lengthened rather than shortened in 
our climate. There are a few, though but a very few, plants of 
a considerably more polar climate than our own which we culti¬ 
vate, and they have too little day and too much night in the 
season of their active growth—the consequence is that the 
period of their growing is lengthened and their growing energy 
diminished,- and they are altogether more troublesome to deal 
with than plants of climates more tropical than our own ; but 
they are in general plants of little beauty, either in themselves 
or in their flowers, and so they are of small consequence. Our 
early spring is apt to start them into action, and, if they are 
plants which, in their native regions, are covered and protected 
by the snow, we can with difficulty keep them in a puny growth 
by all the care that we can bestow. 
Nor need we range far in latitudes for proofs of this ; there 
are some plants, not beauties, certainly, but still pretty little 
plants, which grow at considerable elevations upon the Scottish 
mountains, but we cannot get them down to low-lying and 
sheltered gardens, even in the same parallel of latitude. This, 
again, is not very much to be regretted, especially by the florist, 
but it affords him a useful lesson, namely, that his success and 
vantage lie in cultivating, for the sake of their flowers, plants of 
a climate more tropical than his own; for, although they may 
be changed in some of their characters, the chance is that they 
flower better. 
If they are from warm countries near or within the tropics, 
and yet, from the elevation at which they grow, or any other 
circumstance, are hardy enough for growing and flowering in 
the open air during our summer and autumn, they are likely to 
become annual, though biennials, or even perennials, in their 
native regions. Many of those annuals which make the borders 
so gay in the latter part of summer and early autumn, are of 
this changed character; and, as we have already hinted, we are 
inclined to believe that the change is favorable to better and 
S ; 'OL. IV. NO. II. 4 
