204 PRACTICAL FLORICULTURE. 



server as an agreeable change from the seemingly never- 

 ending brick and stone of the city. The window-garden- 

 ing is not confined to private dwellings, but all the leading 

 hotels are so decorated. In the dining-room of the Lang- 

 ham Hotel (said to be the largest in England), some 

 hundreds of well-grown speciments of plants are placed 

 in the windows, and kept in perfect order during the 

 entire summer. The selection of plants is made regard- 

 less of expense, and in looking around the dining-hall it 

 is with some difficulty that you decide if you are not 

 dining in the midst of a vast conservatory, so redolent is 

 the air with the perfume of flowers. The same taste for 

 window-gardening is displayed, more or less, in all the 

 English towns and villages, and even the humblest 

 thatched cottage of the peasant by the wayside is given 

 a look of quiet happiness by the bower of flowers in the 

 window. How different the look of these humble homes, 

 where the occupant is receiving barely $4 per week, to 

 the squalid shanties in the suburbs of our great cities in 

 America, where the " naturalized " American citizen is 

 earning three times that amount ! 



Here let me deviate from my text, but to a kindred 

 subject, and tell how the English cottager works his gar- 

 den in some of the old towns, such as Colchester. To 

 each cottage, renting for about $50 per year, is attached a 

 garden of something more than an eighth part of an acre 

 in extent. In this little spot the tenant contrives to grow 

 four to six kinds of vegetables, such as potatoes, cabbage, 

 peas, turnips, etc., and of fruits, gooseberries, currants, 

 raspberries, and strawberries. Every foot is made to pro- 

 duce something, and rarely a weed was seen in some 

 scores that we saw ranged side by side. The heavy work 

 is done by the man of the house, " before or after hours," 

 in his own time. In the weeding and hoeing he is 

 assisted by wife or children. There is great rivalry 

 among the different owners of these cottage gardens, and 



