192 ABOUT ORCHIDS. 
teak-wood andcrocks and charcoal. These things 
are piled in heaps against the walls; they are 
stacked on frames overhead; they fill the semi- 
subterranean chambers of which we get a glimpse 
in passing. Our farm resembles a factory in this 
department. 
Ascending to the upper earth again, and crossing 
the corridor, we may visit number one of those 
glass-houses opposite. I cannot imagine, much 
more describe, how that spectacle would strike one 
to whom it was wholly unfamiliar. These build- 
ings—there are twelve of them, side by side— 
measure one hundred and eighty feet in length, and 
the narrowest has thirty-two feet breadth. This 
which we enter is devoted to Odontoglossum crispum, 
with a few Masdevallias. There were twenty-two 
thousand pots init the other day ; several thousand 
have been sold, several thousand have been brought 
in, and the number at this moment cannot be 
computed. Our farmer has no time for speculative 
arithmetic; he deals in produce wholesale. Tele- 
graph an order for a thousand crzspums and you 
cause no stir in the establishment. You take it 
for granted that a large dealer only could propose 
such a transaction. But it does not follow at all. 
Nobody would credit, unless he had talked with one 
of the great farmers, on what enormous scale 
