194 ABOUT ORCHIDS. 
the water, though your boots keep dry. Each side 
the pathway lie shallow troughs, always full. 
Beneath that staging mentioned is a bed of leaves, 
interrupted by a tank here, by a group of ferns 
there, vividly green. Slender iron pipes run 
through the house from end to end, so perforated 
that on turning a tap they soak these beds, fill the 
little troughs and hollow bricks, play in all direc- 
tions down below, but never touchaplant. Under 
such constant drenching the leaf-beds decay, 
throwing up those gases and vapours in which 
the orchid delights at home. Thus the amateur 
should arrange his greenhouse, so far as he may. 
But I would not have it understood that these 
elaborate contrivances are essential. Ifyou would 
beat Nature, as here, making invariably such bulbs 
and flowers as she produces only under rare con- 
ditions, you must follow this system. But orchids 
are not exacting. 
The house opens, at its further end, in a 
magnificent structure designed especially to 
exhibit plants of warm species in bloom. It is 
three hundred feet long, twenty-six wide, eighteen 
high—the piping laid end to end, would measure 
as nearly as possible one mile: we see a practical 
illustration of the resources of the establishment, 
when it is expected to furnish such a show. Here 
