PUBLIC NURSERIES OP THE CITY OE PARIS. 153 



among them are many handsome kinds worthy of extensive 

 use with us. 



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 Bananas, 

 with a line of thirty healthy plants of Musa Ensete 

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

 curvilinear 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 the 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. The boilers of some of the 

 smaller houses are heated by gas, and in this way a very 

 equable temperature is preserved. 



It may give some approximate idea of the collection, 

 when it is stated that there are in cultivation nearly twenty 

 species of Banana, about fifty kinds of Aralia, forty of 

 Anthurium, fifteen of Pothos, thirty of Philodendron, nearly 

 one hundred and twenty of Canna, eighteen of Zamia, and 

 more than one hundred and ten of Ficus, while families 

 better known and more popular are counted by hundreds ! 



Although the place is chiefly devoted to tender plants, 

 and most of the dwarf hardy subjects are grown in the 

 nursery in the Bois de Vincennes, there is, nevertheless, 

 some interest taken in hardy plants, seeing that a part of 

 the garden is devoted to one of the most extensive col- 

 lections of Tulips in existence. 



It is a regular practice in this and other new public 

 gardens in France to plant out a sample of their stock of 

 tender flower-garden plants each year for comparison. In 

 the parks, squares, &c, they of course have opportunities of 

 seeing how they thrive, but the object is to test them all 

 i growing on the one spot and under the same conditions. Thus, 



