Le Jar din Fleuriste de la Ville de Paris. 71 



American and other Agaves, Dahlias, Fuchsias, &c., ad lib., and it 

 seemed to me about the best possible place for storing such plants. 



It is astonishing the quantities in which you see rare things and 

 new bedding plants here. Houses, eighty and one hundred feet 

 long, are filled with one variety 5 houses equally long, devoted to 

 the raising of seedling palms, &c., in quantity. If a plant be con- 

 sidered worthy of attention at all it is propagated by the thousand ; 

 30,000 being the opening quantity for a new thing of any promise. 

 During the past autumn ^0,000 cuttings of one kind of Fuchsia were 

 inserted here in one week. Dracaenas are grown here more abun- 

 dantly than variegated Pelargoniums in many a good English bedding 

 garden, and they have, it is believed, the finest collection of them in 

 existence. In one house a specimen of each kind has been recently 

 planted out for trial in the central pit, and among them many hand- 

 some and noticeable kinds worthy of extensive use with us. The 

 main entrance is in the Avenue d'Eylau, and near it there are some 

 interesting hardy plants, including a collection of bamboos put out 

 to test their hardiness; and that out of door matters are not forgotten 

 will be apparent when it is stated there is a framework as big as a 

 large conservatory, over a collection of tulips. It is a favourite plan 

 here to devote a house to a special subject. Thus there is a large 

 and fine span-roofed stove for Ficuses ; a house for the collection of 

 bedding Musas, with a line of thirty healthy plants of Musa Ensete, 

 forming its backbone, so to speak ; a very large and high curvihnear 

 stove for the great collection of Solanums; special houses for 

 Arums, Caladiums, &c., and a winter garden about 120 feet long 

 by 40 wide, well stored with a healthy stock of usual conservatory 

 plants, with here and there fine-leaved things like Phormium 

 tenax, a very effective plant when well grown in pots and tubs, and 

 of which they have here thousands of plants of various sizes. 

 Of course all this vast collection cannot be and is not used for 

 summer decoration. It is employed for the decoration of the 

 Hotel de Ville, where 10,000 plants are sometimes required upon a 

 single occasion. Each van that conveys the plants to the Hotel de 

 ViUe is fortified with a neat little stove at one end, flat hot-water 



