Rensselaer Republican, Volume 12, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 October 1879 — Flowers in Our Dwellings. [ARTICLE]

Flowers in Our Dwellings.

Whv do plants not thrive in the windows of our dwellings? is the question of many disappointed housekeepers, having in vain tried year after year the cultivation of flowers, to impart their beauty and fragrance to the drawingroom. Sometimes the florist is charged with improper cultivation; but generally the fault is ascribed to “ abominable gas.” Indeed, many have discontinued using it on account of its imagined injurious effects upon plants, but have found that they do not thrive better with other artificial light. It may be most convenient to dispose of the gas theory of destruction here. In impure gas the element eliminated which might prove injurious to the growth of plants is sulphurous acid gas. If this were eliminated in sufficient quantity to injure pTants, it would also destroy animal life; at least, it would prove highly injurious. The burning of a few sulphur matches would produce more injury than the burning of three bat-wing jets. If our gas were so impure as to injure plant or animal life, it is only necessary to lodge a complaint with the Inspector of Gas, and it would immediately be remedied. There are many greenhouses lighted with gas, which is kept burning for hours. One in New York has seven hundred and twenty burners, and yet no injury has "been perceived hitherto. There is no doubt that gas charged with the noxious sulphurous acid gas .would be injurious to vegetable and animal life.

What, then is the cause of the wither mg of flowers when carefully tended wid watered ? To well answer the question, let us consider the condition of the plant itself and its relation to external atmosphere and the inner air of the house. The plant—whether rose, palargonium, or heliotrope—is brought from the moist, warm air of a greenhouse, and placed in a sunny window. Notwithstanding the utmost care. It soon withers, its leaves decay, and the plant is destroyed. If we examine the pot, we find the inner surface lined with fibers of the .plant, which bind the earth firmly in a mass, as if molded in the pot W hat has effected this change so quickly in the flourishing plant? The home is heated by a furnace, or by steam, or by hot water, pr by a base-burner in the

the procexternafair "In ds entrance by door* or cracks or by flues, and rashes toward or store or tanaee. It then ascends or diffuses itself in the apartment, where it impinges on the ceding and rolls toward the upper parted the eold window. Here it ooob and passes rapidly down over the pots of dowers, drying them up quicker than could the Sahara sandwind. The cool air falls upon the floor and rolls along till it reaches the ascending current, uniting with which it is again carried to the Window, to pfias over the plants again; and so the work of drying goes on aB day and night. The effect upon the leaves is to dry them op and cause a rapid evaporation, to supply which all moisture is drawn from tiie earth; hence the fibers seek the inner surface of the pot for moisture, and this they speedily cover. The porous pot soon withdraws all moisture from the fibers, and they become “ burned” insuring the rapid destruction of the plant. Another effect is the drying of the earth, so that the plant derives no moisture. Such is the condition of the plant. If we examine the external atmosphere, supposing the temperature at ten degrees below, zero, we und that all moisture is frozen out of it, and is deposited as “ frost” on all conductors of heat.

To show the extreme dryness of winter air at a low temperature, the most delicately polished metal exposed outdoors remains untarnished. The frostdried air enters our dwellings, and is further rendered more capable of absorbing moisture by contact with the heatea surf aces, and rashes np to the flower-windows, sucking every trace of moisture out of leaves, earth and pots. Some plants—like the German ana English ivy, the Madeira vine, geraniums, cacti—can withstand the fearful trial to Elant-life; but generally plants cannot ve under such circumstances. Before alluding to the remedy, we will notice its effect upon animal life. While the dry heat is not in itself so destructive to animal as to plant life, yet it renders the condition of the air of dwellings most unwholesome and injurious to health, especially that of children. Man is capable of enduring without suffering a nigh degree of dry heat, as is witnessed in the Turkish bath, where the calidarium often rises to two hundred degrees Fahrenheit; and fire kings have endured four hundred degrees Fahrenheit with little inconvenience. This dry heat produces an electrical condition of the atmosphere which is illustrated in the common experiment of lighting the gas with one’s fingers after shuffling over a carpet. The effects upon the carpet are to set free to float in the air the minute woolen fibers of the carpet, which, though invisible, may be observed by holding a moist microscope slide near the floor, and placing in the instrument. One can easily imagine the effect upon a person with delicate lungs of inhaling all day this dust of carpet fiber. If we could see it, we should find children playing on the carpet surrounded with wool dust which they were inhaling. Passing from the drawing-room, we find the passages filled with another kind of dust, arising from earth and sand brought by feet from the street. This, under the microscope, appears as silica crystals and organic matter. In the sleeping apartment the air is filled with dust resembling feathers or broken hair. This we breathe in sleeping, and only some fortunate current of air prevents us from suffering seriously. “Dust thou art,” can be written upon any part of the dwelling, notwithstanding the utmost diligence of the housekeeper. Not only is this frost and heat-dried air laden with dust highly irritable to the lungs, causing varieties of pulmonary diseases to adults, and coughs and catarrh to children; but it also causes irritation to the skin, chapping of the hands and face. Men, who for the most part are frequently out-of-doors, do not suffer; but women confined to the house suffer in their complexion. Hence the striking contrast in the rosy faces of those who live in the maratime provinces, where the air is always moist, to the pale faces of those who live in the dried atmosphere of Northern houses. It requires a whole summer of seaside and country air to restore the health and bloom lost during the winter in our air-dried houses.— Spectator.