flowers on the largest scale—the office wherein
is got up the periodical Flore des Serres, or
Greenhouse and Hothouse Flora, with its
beautiful coloured lithographs, and the seat
of the Royal Institute of Horticulture,
under the auspices of the Belgian government.

Free trade in plants is the obvious and
leading idea communicated by the aspect of
the place; practical utility and convenience
are evidently the beau-idéal aimed at.
And certainly the object has been attained.
The garden stands en rase campagne, as they
say, in the midst of the vast plain which
constitutes the Lowlands of Belgium; and not
in one of those snug and comfortable nooks
which are found along the Devonshire coast,
amidst the Highlands of Scotland, or in the
valleys of Wales; where the site would be
sheltered from cold and boisterous winds.
Gentbrugge is subject to awful squalls and
frightful hurricanes; there being nothing
nearer than the Swedish mountains to
break the force of northerly gales, which
come sweeping along without having met with
the slightest opposition on their arrival
at the Belgian coast. Consequently, V. H.
(I take the liberty of compressing Monsieur
Van Houtte into a couple of initials) has
surrounded himself with poplars, willows,
elms, and other tall, quick-growing trees, as
barricades against the onslaughts of Boreas,
and the almost equally mischievous south-
west gusts. He is screened from harm by
leafy fortifications, to the great disgust of a
miller hard by, who has a natural predilection
in favour of puffs of wind. Unfortunately,
V. H. cannot thus exclude the perfumes
emitted by a neighbouring tallow
chandler; which, when wafted in the direction
of delicate plants, have a tendency to make
them feel sick and languid. Besides the
grand line of trees along the outer boundary
of the nursery (which stands on something
like thirty acres), additional shelter is afforded
by parallel screens—in fact, by low walls
built of living shrubs. In some parts of the
garden the screens run from east to west, for
the sake of plants that require a little sun,
and not too much; other sets of screens run
from north to south, allowing their assembled
vegetable guests to bask in the broiling noontide
sun. V. H. is quite aware that such
screens, to be perfect, should be wooden walls
composed of boards and planking, rather
than lines of growing bushes, whose leaves
absorb the elementary particles floating in
the atmosphere, to the prejudice of the pot-
plants that are standing near them. It is
found that a delicate shrub, planted close to
a large wood, will not grow so vigorously as
it would do if more isolated from hungry
neighbours. In England, nursery screens are
mostly composed of beech or hornbeam;
trees which are tenacious of their leaves all
winter long when kept close-clipped. Here,
they are made up of miscellaneous shrubs,
apparently the first that came to hand—
lilac, laburnum, ribes, Weigela rosea, lime,
poplar, witch-elm, spirea, hawthorn;
anything, in short, and grown as espaliers or
fanwise. But the whole continental system
of hedge-making differs immensely from the
British. In France, favourite hedges are
hoed and weeded at foot, three or four
times during the year, and are even
occasionally manured. An adolescent hedge
of Thuja here, and another of holly,
promise well.

In commencing an establishment for
commercial purposes, it is a great point to form
a plan capable of extension. Greenhouses in
line, like regiments, are more convenient to
command, to add to, or to dismiss, than
houses either crowded higgledy-piggledy or
scattered at random over the area of a
garden. The plants, too, are more easily
served with their various little comforts and
necessaries. At V. H.'s, seven houses are
heated by one boiler, and are constantly
supplied with tepid water for watering by simply
pumping the liquid past the hot boiler to a
reservoir. A windmill assists the pumping
by hand; and a simple application of hydrostatic
science cuts off the pressure from a
larger tank above, which would otherwise be
inconvenient to a smaller tank below. Close
at hand a gasometer, filled with home-made
gas, furnishes light to the establishment,
including the government horticultural school.
All the houses are sunk in the ground; you
descend to their floor by three or four steps.
In this they imitate the habitations of men
within the arctic circle and beneath the
equator. Snow huts are sunk in, and not
built on the snow; the palace at Lucknow
contains a suite of cellar apartments for the
retreat of royalty in extra sultry weather;
and V. H.'s houses stoop to conquer. They
obtain, by their depressed level, the advantage
of moisture in summer and of warmth in
winter. When it is cold at Ghent, it is cold;
and when a drying north-east wind blows, it
is dry. Against scorching sunshine, there
are wooden-louvres, which prevent the
chemical and heat-rays, as well as the light-
rays, from entering the seminary of delicate
young plants, to aid whose progress reduplicated
shelter is afforded. Greenhouse within
greenhouse, and bellglass under sash-frame,
assist the more backward pupils, till their
advancement is sufficient to admit of their
being sent forth to make their start in public
life. Excellent shades are made of wooden
splines fixed to cords, something in the way
of Venetian blinds. Between each spline a
narrow line of sunshine is admitted, which
has not time to burn, because the earth's
rotation keeps it continually on the move.
When no shade is wanted, the blind is rolled
up, and secured out of the way with an end
of string.

Four distinct propagating houses, kept at
the temperature suitable to their purposes