A WATER GARDEN
Horticulture thus carried on is extremely interesting from a scientific point of view, but is not commercially desirable, nor could the ordinary flower-grower afford it. Fog-annihilators, and the use of chemicals in conservatories have also been tried, the latter with very scant success. Charcoal seems to be by far the best filtering medium. There is a Mr. Toope, who, in a small conservatory at his offices at Stepney, is endeavouring to cultivate a collection of orchids and other stove plants in safety by the use of charcoal filters and warmed air.
The method he uses is ingenious. Boxes containing open-work trays, upon which sticks of charcoal are loosely placed, are set upon the floor under the staging. These communicate with the exterior by means of apertures which can be opened or closed at will. The air (fog and all) is led from outside through these trays, passes the charcoal, impinges upon the hot-water pipes, and is then allowed to reach the plants. Draught is regulated by valves. Results so far are considered very encouraging, but not convincing. Mr. Toope has other things to occupy his attention, and sometimes has to trust his pets to others; if it were not for this, he thinks he would ensure a greater measure of success.
It seems curious to think of plants taking to respirators, just as human beings have discarded them; but the use of charcoal does sound common-sensible. We are all familiar with the extraordinary power charcoal has of absorbing and oxidizing the products of decomposition of organic matter, and of rendering harmless the greater number of easily alterable gases and vapours. A few years since, after some nursing lectures at the Royal Hospital for children and women at the Waterloo Road, the following examination question was put to the students: “How would you ventilate a room of a smallpox patient on the night of a dense fog?” The question puzzled us all. We were told the right answer afterwards. “Open the window at the top, and hang up a blanket.” This appeared to me to be a stifling arrangement; as at present advised, I would treat patients as Mr. Toope treats his plants, and give them charcoal filters instead of the blanket. The chemist Stenhouse has devised a respirator for human beings on the charcoal principle, for use in districts smitten with cholera or yellow fever.
What Plants suffer least from Fog?
This is such an important question for town people that I have given it a separate heading. Here is the answer: Ferns and bulbous plants. The latter have but a short reign ere they die off, so that we must put down Ferns as the Londoners’ greatest stand-by. Considering the tender and delicate nature of their foliage, this is one of the things we should deem a miracle if we were not used to it, but the frailty of the Fern is only in appearance.
Professor Oliver, in a Report to the Scientific Committee of the Royal Horticultural Society, says, “At Kew Gardens I have examined the various Fern-houses after spells of severe fog, when the collections of stove plants in adjacent houses were completely disfigured from this cause, without remarking any damage to the Ferns to speak of.”
How is this? Ferns are shade-loving plants, so that darkness, such a terrible foe to most plants, is to them comparatively harmless. Other things being equal, the more greedy a plant is of sunlight, the more will it suffer when its illumination is reduced. There is another point that tells in favour of the Fern. During the sunless months of autumn and early winter the vitality of most flowering plants is lowered, which renders them unfit to bear a strain—they are “run down,” and, like ourselves in the same circumstances, liable to “catch” anything, and go under. Ferns, on the other hand, meet the enemy and battle with it in good condition; no doubt their excellent constitutions are largely inherited from early forefathers who lived in an age that was far too rough for flowers; they were giants in those days.
Bulbous plants stand fog well for a different reason. They rely on the stores collected, each one for himself, in his own compact small body. No squirrel nor dormouse is more thrifty, nor better understands the art of making hay while the sun shines. This is how it is that Londoners are so successful in growing bulbs. Look at the parks in the spring-time, with their sheets of Crocuses, Snowdrops, and Tulips. Allium, too, and Narcissus and Hyacinth, are just as happy close to, and even in the midst of towns, showing very little injury after being exposed to fog. Flowers and flower-buds are the first parts of any plant to evince suffering; six or seven hours of a bad fog will suffice to leave a scar, but the flower that shows the blemish is pretty sure to be growing on a plant that has no useful bulb set at its base.
London fog is often the signal for much burning of gas. The usual hardiness of the Fern deserts it here; no plants have a greater dislike to fumes of gas; they resent them as much as any other of God’s creatures who were meant to live and breathe in the sweet air which is heaven’s best gift.