112 FIELDS, FACTORIES AND WORKSHOPS. 



to emancipate horticulture from climate. I mean the 

 glasshouse culture of fruit and vegetables. 



Formerly the greenhouse was the luxury of the rich 

 mansion. It was kept at a high temperature, and was 

 made use of for growing, under cold skies, the golden 

 fruit and the bewitching flowers of the South. Now, 

 and especially since the progress of technics allows of 

 making cheap glass and of having all the woodwork, 

 sashes and bars of a greenhouse made by machinery, 

 the glasshouse becomes appropriated for growing fruit 

 for the million, as well as for the culture of common 

 vegetables. The aristocratic hothouse, stocked with the 

 rarest fruit trees and flowers, remains; nay, it spreads 

 more and more for growing luxuries which become more 

 and more accessible to the great number. But by its 

 side we have the plebeian greenhouse, which is heated 

 for only a couple of months in winter, and the still more 

 economically built " cool greenhouse," which is a simple 

 glass shelter a big " cool frame " and is stuffed with 

 the humble vegetables of the kitchen garden : the po- 

 tatoes, the carrots, the French beans, the peas and the 

 like. The heat of the sun, passing through the glass, 

 but prevented by the same glass from escaping by radia- 

 tion, is sufficient to keep it at a very high temperature 

 during spring and early summer. A new system of 

 horticulture the market-garden under glass is thus 

 rapidly gaining ground. 



The greenhouse for commercial purposes is essenti- 

 ally of British, or perhaps Scottish, origin. Already 

 in 1851, Mr. Th. Rivers had published a book, The 

 Orchard Houses and the Cultivation of Fruit Trees in 

 Pots under Glass. And we are told by Mr. D. Thomson, 

 in the Journal of Horticulture (3ist January, 1889), that 

 nearly fifty years ago grapes in February were sold at 

 253. the pound by a grower in the north of England, 

 and that part of them was sent by the buyer to Paris, 

 for Napoleon III/s table, at 503. the pound. "Now," 



