Nature, when intelligently followed, would not lead us far astray, we must be careful not to follow her too strictly when dealing with the management of plants in gardens.  There are other circumstances besides the nature of the soil by which plants are influenced.  Soil is only one of the conditions on which plants depend, and where the other conditions are not exactly the same in our gardens as in nature, it is often found necessary to employ a different soil from that in which the plants grow when wild.

It has been stated that plants do not grow naturally in the soil best suited for them, and that the reason why many plants are found in peculiar places is not at all because they prefer them, but because they alone are capable of existing there, or because they take refuge there from the inroads of stouter neighbours who would destroy them or crowd them out.  There are, as every gardener knows, numerous plants that succeed equally well in widely different soils, and a soil which may be suitable for a plant in one place, may prove totally unsuited in another.  Hence it is why we find one gardener recommending one kind of soil, and another a different one, for the same plant, both answering equally well because of other conditions fitting better with each soil.  This helps us to understand how it is that many garden subjects grow much better when planted in composts often quite different from those the plants are found in when wild.  Few plants have a particular predilection for soil, and some have what we may call the power to adapt themselves to conditions often widely different.

In Cactuses we have a family of plants for which special conditions are necessary; and, as regards soil, whether we are guided by nature or by gardening experience, we are led to conclude that almost all of them thrive only when planted in one kind, that soil being principally loam.  Plants which are limited in nature to sandy, sun-scorched plains or the glaring sides of rocky hills and mountains, where scarcely any other form of vegetation can exist, are not likely to require much decayed vegetable humus, but must obtain their food from inorganic substances, such as loam, sand, or lime.  So it is with them when grown in our houses.  They are healthiest and longest-lived when planted in a loamy soil; and although they may be grown fairly well for a time when placed in a compost of loam and leaf mould, or loam and peat, yet the growth they make is generally too sappy and weak; it is simply fat without bone, which, when the necessary resting period comes round, either rots or gradually dries up.  In preparing soil, therefore, for all Cactuses (except Epiphyllum and Rhipsalis, which will be treated separately) a good, rather stiff loam, with plenty of grass fibre in it, should form the principal ingredient, sand and, if obtainable, small brick rubble being added—­one part of each of the latter to six parts of the former.  The brick rubble should be pounded up so that the largest pieces are about