268 Horticultural Implements, Appliances, etc. 



French use iron houses, and generally think our wooden ones too 

 heavy and cumbrous. One mode of glazing is worth notice, and 

 better and neater than we often see in England. The panes did 

 not overlap, but met evenly, a particle or so of putty being used 

 between them if they do not meet exactly ; and on the outer side 

 a neat thin strip of lead paper, about half an inch wide, is laid over 

 each junction. The appearance of this silvery strip is good, and it 

 is in every way effective. It is, in fact, heartily adopted by M. 

 BariUet, and is probably not surpassed, if equalled, by any mode of 

 glazing. The house is by its use glazed almost hermetically, while 

 there is not a particle of the rustiness that occurs in English houses 

 from decaying putty, &c., to be seen. There is no difficulty what- 

 ever in the repairing of such houses, which is not the case in some 

 of our novel modes of glazing. This method is good and elegant : 

 the best for large houses, which should generally be of iron, if we 

 do not wish them to be intolerably ugly. The small houses of the 

 French are of iron too, and nothing can be more useful than the 

 very cheap, two-light, low iron houses at La Muette. The aspect 

 of most French glasshouses is spoiled by the effect of the shading 

 employed — ^laths connected together by string and little hooks, 

 and painted dark green, and by nearly all the houses above the 

 small and useful low two-light ones having a gangway over the 

 roof, so that men may pass to arrange this shading, &c. It is 

 a bad, very awkward, and very expensive way. The mode of 

 glazing here alluded to is well worthy of our adoption for con- 

 servatories, and indeed all iron houses, and may be seen largely 

 employed in the great nursery garden of the city of Paris at 

 Passy. 



Garden Labels. — There were very many labels shown in the gar- 

 dens of the Exposition, the best being some small ones exposed by 

 M. H. Aubert, 189, Rue du Temple. These were in rather thickish 

 zinc, and very neatly and deeply impressed and accentuated. They 

 were of sizes suitable for rose and fruit trees, small ones for numberintr, 

 others with stems for using with pot plants, and so on. There is a 

 thinner type of the same style common enough in our seed-shops, 



