130 WORK UNDER GLASS 



required, in short, for " supply," not for botanical 

 research or artistic effect, other than for drawing- 

 room decoration. We want these houses to give 

 us things to beautify the living-rooms, we require 

 vegetables that will save buying imports from 

 other countries, and the old-fashioned, early- 

 Victorian glasshouse, with its jumble of many- 

 coloured flowers, is required no longer. Only in 

 days when ladies were considered to be too fragile 

 to take part in outdoor pursuits was it a relaxation 

 to them to walk into its well-kept precincts and 

 see plants with which they would otherwise hardly 

 have become familiar, for they were not brought 

 into the living-rooms as they are in these present 

 days. 



But to return to our small market-house ; let 

 us walk through a door in the glass partition and 

 enter the somewhat colder portion. Here the 

 carnation has a place of honour, and its tall grey- 

 green foliage looks well near a group of tuberoses 

 much sought after by Londoners, who send for 

 weekly boxes of flowers. Rare plants are not 

 what people covet most, but if they can have 

 something in mid-winter that brings a remembrance 

 of warm days and blue skies, they gain pleasure, 

 and it is for this reason that from Christmas on- 

 wards pots of forget-me-nots in full flower are 

 always welcome. Mignonette and violets in pots 

 are on the narrow shelves that go all round the 

 house and in the centre is a group of blue cineraria, 

 only they do not belong to that unpardonable 

 magenta or mauve colour that often goes by the 

 name of blue. The one we grow is powder-blue 



