Excerpt from The Floral World and Garden Guide, 1863, Vol. 6 Or the inelegant plan of smearing the glass with size and whitening must be adopted. This last is a rough and ready way of shading which costs nothing beyond the time of preparing it, and is very effectual. The camellia house need not be very freely ventilated; during the early period of the year they do not want much air, and though they can scarcely have too much during summer and autumn, ventilators and doors may then be left open night and day, or the plants may be set outside to ripen the wood and perfect the blossom buds. Old greenhouses that are dark and defective in ventilation, and therefore unsuitable for such plants as erica and epacris, etc., may be made good use of for the culture of camellias. Though we have remarked above that camellias may be grown in unheated structures, it is far preferable to heat the house with hot water pipes or a tank, so as to be able to raise the temperature to 60 during the severest frost, as we sometimes have the coldest weather of the whole year just as the first batch of camellias is coming into bloom, and in any case there should be the means of keeping out frost, which is never a benefit to the plants, though they can bear half a dozen degrees with impunity if the wood is ripe. We ourselves lost a house full of camellias on the night of the 24th and 25th of December, 1860 (who will ever forget that night), in a lean-to where, owing to the festive character of the season, the fire had been neglected, and the plants were suddenly subjected to 12 of frost, which caused the stems to Split from head to foot, as if operated upon with a penknife. We shall never again, we trust, expose valuable plants to such a risk, and the mention of the fact may be a useful warning to others, to be at all times prepared for the worst possibilities. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."