68 Le Jar din Fleurlste de la Ville de Paris. 



the frames before alluded to were furnished with iron sashes; 

 and many of these were utilized in the building of the houses. 

 Passing along by the ends of these houses you may see a bench 

 about a hundred feet long, filled completely with the deeply-dyed 

 Alternantheras a sheet of colour j the next devoted to young 

 palms, as green and vigorous as if in their native wilds ; another 

 devoted to young Dracaenas and fine-leaved plants generally ; and 

 so on. The benches are of slate, and the plants are held well up 

 to the glass, while quantities of plants in the way of Canna and 

 Dahlia may be stored beneath. We generally prefer wooden 

 houses, but any horticulturist who has seen the plants in the low 

 range at Passy will agree with me that no plants were ever seen in 

 finer health or condition than the numerous species in it : while 

 the very permanent nature of the structure is a great gain, inasmuch 

 as a wooden series of the same character would require a complete 

 overhaul in the course of a dozen, and perhaps reconstruction at the 

 end of twenty years. A mode of protecting these houses in very 

 severe weather is deserving of notice. It is by means of wooden 

 shutters, each being about the size of the sash of the house. As will 

 be seen by the engraving, the gutters, strongly lined with zinc, 

 are wide, so that men can run along with the greatest ease to 

 perform any operation between them. In winter, the gutter space 

 is frequently filled with leaves, to prevent the influence of frost 

 settling down between each house ; while the glass of the houses 

 likely to suffer most is protected at night by the shutters. These 

 are not taken from between the houses every day, but simply left in 

 piles often or so over some unoccupied spot, or if the range happens 

 to be completely filled, shifting the position devoted to each pile of 

 shutters every day, so as to prevent the plants beneath from suffer- 

 ing. The facility and simplicity with which these houses may be 

 thus encased in wood to meet a very severe frost, and in a few 

 minutes, and without the least untidiness of any kind, during day 

 or night, are quite admirable. Matters are so arranged in the 

 houses that they could dispense entirely with this precaution, 

 which is simply noticed from its adaptability to many places 



