120 THE FLOEAL WORLD AIsD G-ARDEN GUIDE. 



and if you -were fastidious about architectural ^lass, you would not ^i\e 

 rao a ten-pound note for that hoi:se as it is. Why figure it, then ? Well, 

 I must repeat that the figure is correct, though the house looks better on 

 paper than on the ground, and next I must say that this is the most 

 extraordinary house I ever knew for plants to grow in. I often think of 

 Jerrold's description of the fertility of America, that if you plant a nail 

 over night, it's a spike next morning, and here I might almost fling in at 

 the doorway an inch piece of a plant, and expect next day to find that 

 that inch had potted itself, and grown during the night to specimen size, 

 training included, and would flower before dinner-time the same day. 

 You see the house is where the ditch u«ed to be, and the walk is not 

 much above the average level of the water in that ditch. A well close 

 beside the door of the house takes the water now, and from that well 

 we pump with one of Dray's liquid manure pumps as much water as we 

 require at that end of the garden, and occasionally have a foot depth of 

 water in the house in winter-time after heavy rains. Then it faces full 

 south, and the boarded wall reflects a great heat, so that by regulating 

 the ventilation judiciously, it can be made as hot as an oven anj' day from 

 mid-spring to mid-autumn, and it is the sunshine, the heat, and the damp 

 combined that makes it such a place for jjlants to grow in. 



Now that you have an idea of the house, I must tell 3'ou how it has 

 been heated during five years past. In the view of the interior you see 

 in the centre one of Musgrave's slow combustion stoves. It was put 

 there in the first instance as a makeshift, to gain time to fix a furnace and 

 hot-water pipes. Some delay occurred, and the stove answered so well 

 that I thought I had best let well alone, and there it remains. The stove 

 stands on the floor. To the smoke outlet is fitted a chimney of 4-inch 

 glazed drain pipes, and this chimney terminates in a mushroom top, which 

 mushroom top is attached to a short length of iron pipe, just of the 

 proper size to drop into the top of the drain-pipe flue, and carry the 

 mushroom with it into its place. 



It would be a very long story to tell how the house has been used. 

 Dr. Lindley heard of it some years ago, and sent his factotum to take a 

 survey ; it was then choking with bedding-plants, and the factotum hap- 

 pened to call when the ground was covered with snow, and I rather think 

 the roof was so covered with snow that I had to light a candle to enable 

 the commissioner to see the sort of place he had come into. Let me 

 gather a few items, the value of which the reader must appraise for him- 

 self. In the winter of 1859, Justicia carnea — four fine plants — wintered 

 close bei^ide the stove, and flowered tolerably well. In the same winter, 

 the artillery plant, Filca allitrichoides, wintered safely, and with it gera- 

 niums Mangiesi, Bijou, Lady Plymouth, Flower of the Day, Dandy, 

 and Golden Chain. I omit the mention of common scarlets, because they 

 can be wintered in any good pit. Any time since the house was bixilt it 

 would keep Layiianas, Hcliotro'pes, Cujiheas, Troijosolums, variegated Veronica 

 Andersoni. Of course all less touchy objects are as comfortable there as 

 need be. During that desperate winter of 1860-61, the damp did more 

 mischief than the frost, and on Christmas night, when the thermometer 

 registered here about 20" of frost, the fire went out through neglect, and 

 a great many plants Avere killed. But in that winter the losses were not 

 so numerous as in many better built and more pretentious houses, and, 

 generally speaking, the soft- wooded plants sufi'ered least. 



