xican orchid, as close
as they will fit. Upon the left hand lie a series of glass structures;
upon the right, below the level of the corridor, the workshops; at the
end--why, to be frank, the end is blocked by a ponderous screen of
matting just now. But this dingy barrier is significant of a work in
hand which will not be the least curious nor the least charming of the
strange sights here. The farmer has already a "siding" of course, for
the removal of his produce; he finds it necessary to have a station of
his own also for the convenience of clients. Beyond the screen at
present lies an area of mud and ruin, traversed by broken walls and rows
of hot-water piping swathed in felt to exclude the chill air. A few
weeks since, this little wilderness was covered with glass, but the ends
of the long "houses" have been cut off to make room for a structure into
which visitors will step direct from the train. The platform is already
finished, neat and trim; so are the vast boilers and furnaces, newly
rebuilt, which would drive a cotton factory.

A busy scene that is which we survey, looking down through openings in
the wall of the corridor. Here is the composing-room, where that
magnificent record of orchidology in three languages, the
"Reichenbachia," slowly advances from year to year. There is the
printing-room, with no steam presses or labour-saving machinery, but the
most skilful craftsmen to be found, the finest paper, the most
deliberate and costly processes, to rival the great works of the past in
illustrating modern science. These departments, however, we need not
visit, nor the chambers, lower still, where mechanical offices are
performed.

The "Importing Room" first demands notice. Here cases are received by
fifties and hundreds, week by week, from every quarter of the orchid
world, unpacked, and their contents stored until space is made for them
up above. It is a long apartment, broad and low, with tables against the
wall and down the middle, heaped with things which to the uninitiated
seem, for the most part, dry sticks and dead bulbs. Orchids everywhere!
They hang in dense bunches from the roof. They lie a foot thick upon
every board, and two feet thick below. They are suspended on the walls.
Men pass incessantly along the gangways, carrying a load that would fill
a barrow. And all the while fresh stores are accumulating under the
hands of that little group in the middle, bent and busy at cases just
arrived. They