The broad middle tables are heaped with peat and moss and
leaf-mould and white sand. At counters on either side unskilled
labourers are sifting and mixing, while boys come and go, laden with
pots and baskets of teak-wood and crocks and charcoal. These things are
piled in heaps against the walls; they are stacked on frames overhead;
they fill the semi-subterranean chambers of which we get a glimpse in
passing. Our farm resembles a factory in this department.
Ascending to the upper earth again, and crossing the corridor, we may
visit number one of those glass-houses opposite. I cannot imagine, much
more describe, how that spectacle would strike one to whom it was wholly
unfamiliar. These buildings--there are twelve of them, side by
side--measure one hundred and eighty feet in length, and the narrowest
has thirty-two feet breadth. This which we enter is devoted to
_Odontoglossum crispum_, with a few _Masdevallias_. There were
twenty-two thousand pots in it the other day; several thousand have been
sold, several thousand have been brought in, and the number at this
moment cannot be computed. Our farmer has no time for speculative
arithmetic; he deals in produce wholesale. Telegraph an order for a
thousand _crispums_ and you cause no stir in the establishment. You take
it for granted that a large dealer only could propose such a
transaction. But it does not follow at all.
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