* 
The Greenhouse. 
147 
keep in view the probability that I shall some day cover an acre of land with 
glass ? ” The reply to the imagined exclamation is that we cannot at this 
moment fix the rule of our lives for all the moments that are coming. The 
suggestion with which we open this essay applies to great gardens and to 
little gardens alike, and we repeat that it is advisable in determining the site 
for a plant-house to keep in view the possibility that some day the house 
itself will be enlarged, or another house added to it. There may be good 
reasons in particular cases for scattering the plant-houses all over a property, 
but it is the duty of a practical essayist to say that they can be more easily 
and more cheaply managed, and will yield more enjoyment to their owner, 
generally speaking, when they are all closely connected and built according to 
a predetermined scheme. 
In the chapter on the Con¬ 
servatory enough has been said 
about facility of access at all 
seasons, and those remarks 
apply to plant-houses of all 
kinds. It is, however, neither 
possible nor desirable to have 
every plant-house so contiguous 
to the dwelling that we may go 
to it in slippers and bare-headed 
any day in the year as we go 
to the breakfast-room or library. 
But the amateur who purposes 
to grow a great variety of 
plants would do well to consider the convenience of having the several houses 
so connected that they may all be traversed as one structure, glass doors and 
divisions alone separating them, with no intervening yards, or paths, or open 
spaces, to chill the visitor who has been stewed in the stove and might 
very well bear to be cooled in the greenhouse, if only it could be reached 
without the agony of three minutes’ exposure to a biting north-east wind. 
The horticultural builders offer us an endless choice of greenhouses, and 
many of the modes of construction are patented. As it is our fixed rule not 
to recommend traders in any department, we refrain from offering any opinion 
as to the relative merits of these various inventions. But a few remarks on 
first principles may be useful. Abundance of light and abundance of air must 
