162 
Rustic Adornments. 
and gain for our advantage two warm walls, against which to pile up 
a rockery, and in this rockery the ferns and lycopodiums are planted. 
A neat paving of tiles affords a comfortable footing ; the rockeries rise to the 
roof, and consist of banks of peat, faced with burrs from the brick-kiln 
planted with ferns everywhere except on the top next the glass, where a few 
sedums, sempervivums, and other succulent plants enjoy the extra light and 
less moisture incident to their position. There never was a better work in the 
way of gardening accomplished here than the building of that little fern 
house, in which about a hundred and fifty species and varieties have thriven 
during twelve years past, making summer all the year round in their perennial 
greenness. 
Another example that we are acquainted with is worth special mention. 
This is partly excavated, so as to be below the ground-level. Instead 
of brick walls, broad 
solid banks of peat "" ■ A ■ — 1 1 1 1 -=j ■ 
are provided for 
the support of the 
roof, which is a 
low span : one side, 
that to the north, L,„. 
being of glass, the 
other side covered B 
with felt. At the 
lowest end is placed 
the furnace, and a sufficient service of hot-water pipes to maintain there a 
tropical temperature. In the centre of the house the hot-water pipes are 
reduced in number, and the result is a greenhouse temperature. At the upper 
end there is only one four-inch pipe, just to keep out frost; and here we have 
only a little better climate than prevails outside, but with the advantage of 
glass to shelter the ferns and the visitors. Thus in one house the ferns of all 
climates may be represented, and we pass by pleasant degrees from the cool 
department to the tropical, and may take time to recover from the bath of 
warm vapour we are treated to in the lower part of the house ere emerging 
again into the open air. It will be understood, of course, that in a district 
where peat is plentiful, such a house is a comparatively inexpensive luxury ; 
and we can assure the reader it is so furnished and kept that we might wander 
far and wide to find its equal in interest and beauty. 
