HORTICULTURAL JOURNAL. 71 
drons, Ghent Azaleas, Kalmias, Paeonies, complete collections of herbaceous 
plants, evergreens, and every other nurserj-stock. All articles are grown in 
great quantities^, and particular care is taken to make all the different as- 
sortments as choice and complete as possible. All those who desire to 
obtain a more intimate knowledge of the abundance and variety of plants, 
which are here grown, we beg leave to refer to the catalogues, annually 
published by this establishment. 
Havinig thus had a hasty survey of the first department, the Nursery, we 
now turn to the second, and pay a visit to the office, from which is issued the 
finest and the most ividely circulated of all the illustrated horticultural 
journals. This office is situated on the first floor of a vast building, two 
stories high, and above four hundred feet long, which forms a wing to the 
house of the proprietor, and stretches along the eastern boundary of the 
establishment. On entering the principal office, the length of which is 150 
feet, we have occasion to admire the process of lithographic color-printing. 
Thirteen presses stand in one row, nearly every one printing in another 
color. Further on we meet a cabinet, separated by glass partitions : this is 
the office of the head foreman and his first artists ; from here he directs and 
inspects the numerous body of printers, engravers, colorists, and other em- 
ployees, whose number varies from 150 to 200 ; here the new plants are 
drawn from nature, and these drawings, manifoldly multiplied by the litho- 
graphic printing and the colorist's pencil, make them soon known to the 
whole community of friends of flowers and gardening. The remaining 
room of the office is filled like a school-room, with desks and benches in 
long rows, occupied by the colorists, who give the last finish to the 
plates. The editorship is divided into two parts, the horticultural and 
the botanical. The first, as well as the head management, is conducted by 
M. Van Houtte himself; the second is entrusted to one of the ablest 
botanists of the present time. Dr. Planchon, professor in the faculty of 
medicine at Montpellier; besides whom, the most eminent of European 
botanists, men, such as Blume, De Candolle, Decaisne, Brogniart, 
GoBPPERT, Reichenbach, Von Schlechtendahl, and others, have lent 
their protection and assistance to a work, which by itself will be sufficient 
to render the name Van Houtte immortal in the annals of horticultural 
literature. 
The '-'■Flore des Serres et des Jardins de VEurope,' has now already 
commenced its tenth volume, and the scientific value of its letter-press, 
the beautiful and highly finished plates, as well as the elegant exterior and 
its cheapness, have long since placed it in the first rank of illustrated jour- 
