216 



THE GREEN-HOUSE. 



attended with success, till the nature of plants or the 

 nature of a coal fire is considerably altered. 



A number of London green-houses, placed behind 

 the houses on the tops of kitchens and other offices, 

 and of plant cabinets communicating with living- 

 rooms, are maintained in order by nurserymen in this 

 way : and a number also are kept in order, as it is 

 called, by jobbing gardeners, who call occasionally 

 to see that the plants are properly watered, who 

 supply pots of mignionette, and who shift the plants 

 in spring, and prune them in autumn. But the 

 green-houses managed in the latter mode are wretched 

 vegetable abodes, — hospitals or pest-houses of plants ; 

 and to any person Avho knows what a green healthy 

 plant is, they are deformities rather than ornaments. 



Another mode in which green-houses in the me- 

 tropolis are sometimes managed is as follows : — The 

 occupier of the London house has a villa within 

 fifteen or twenty miles of town, where he has a green- 

 house, or grapery and green-house combined, with 

 pits and hot-beds, and keeps a gardener. From the 

 country weekly supplies of vegetables, butter, eggs, 

 fowls, cream, and pots of forced articles, are obtained, 

 and faded flowers and sickly green-house plants re- 

 turned. This is certainly the proudest and most 

 gratifying mode of all ; but yet as far as the green- 

 house is concerned, it is attended with less show than 

 where a nurseryman of extensive practice in the cul- 

 ture of plants in pots is employed. Such a nursery- 

 man has four grand sources of disposing of plants in 



