PUBLIC NURSERIES OP THE CITY OF PARIS. 151 



chill the plants in winter, or running the draughty gauntlet, 

 as he usually has to do where houses are arranged in 

 the ordinary scattered way. Moreover, as in many cases, 

 one long house is devoted to a particular species or variety 

 in much request, the visitor or superintendents may see the 

 state of the stock by simply traversing the central passage, 

 and looking through the glass dividing it from the houses. 



But though the ordinary dwarf bedding plants are pre- 

 served in vast quantities both in the rough frames and the 

 houses, these are not the cheapest ways in which they manage 

 such things here, as we shall presently see. Many have 

 heard of the graceful use made of the Cannas in Parisian 

 gardening. These are preserved in a most efficient way in 

 caves under the garden. When the stone is taken out of 

 the ground for building purposes, a rough propping column 

 is left here and there, and thus dark and spacious caves of 

 equable temperature are left underground. They are in 

 this case about seven feet high, and are used for storing 

 plants that may be well preserved without light in the 

 winter. You descend by a sloping tan-covered passage, 

 and most likely you will imagine yourself in a large potato 

 store immediately you get down, as heaps of different kinds 

 of Canna, and those that are by no means common with us, 

 are in winter spread upon the floor a yard or more deep, 

 and twenty feet long. The tubers of some of the large 

 varieties are from five to ten inches long, and the men 

 turn them over just as they would the contents of a series 

 of potato-pits. 



Here too in wide masses against the wall are arrayed 

 quantities of Aralia papyrifera, the handsome and much 

 grown species so useful for subtropical gardening. It 

 seems in a perfectly firm and safe condition, growing in 

 this dark or rather gas -lighted atmosphere, and sends out 

 long blanched leaves of a delicate lemon colour, which will 

 of course soon acquire a healthy green when the plants are 

 placed in the open air. Thus they preserve Aralia papy- 

 rifera in all sizes, and this fine thing is turned out for 

 garden embellishment almost as cheap as wall-flowers. Of 

 course analogous protection could be given to such things 



