THE GREEN-HOUSE. 



217 



flower, besides his ordinary chance buyers and pri- 

 vate custom : first, he sells to the hawkers ; next, he 

 can send to Covent-garden market by cart-loads ; 

 third, he supplies green-houses by the month or year, 

 and lastly, he supplies routs. He is never therefore 

 without a large stock in hand ; and in order to make 

 the most of these, he first tries them at market when 

 they are barely coming into flower, which state suits 

 the shopkeepers who buy to keep them a week or 

 two to sell again. If he fails there, the hawkers 

 come to him every morning and see what he has got 

 a bargain ; and his next resource is the green-houses, 

 cabinets, or chamber-stages, which he supplies by 

 contract ; and when he removes them from thence in 

 their last stage of beauty, he sends them to a rout, 

 where one night in general kills or half kills alike 

 the best and w^orst of plants ; and for which he gets 

 the plant returned and half its price. In this way it 

 is that a public dealer can always afford to keep up a 

 finer display of plants in a town green-house than 

 any private gentleman whatever with a country villa. 

 Some families who have no green-house, keep up 

 a stock of plants in their rooms by purchasing at the 

 nurseries, and at Covent-garden market ; but this is 

 done at greater expense than by contracting with a 

 nurseryman, because the family can make no use of 

 the plants when out of flower. When this mode is 

 confined to annuals, such as mignionette, wall-flowers, 

 sweet-peas, &c., or to bulbous roots, it does very well. 



