Thence we mount to the potting-rooms, where a dozen skilled workmen try to keep pace with the growth of the imported plants; taking up, day by day, those which thrust out roots so fast that postponement is injurious.  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.  Nobody would credit, unless he had talked with one of the great farmers, on what enormous scale orchids are cultivated up and down by private persons.  Our friend has a client who keeps his stock of O. crispum alone at ten thousand; but others, less methodical, may have more.

Opposite the door is a high staging, mounted by steps, with a gangway down the middle and shelves descending on either hand.  Those shelves are crowded with fine plants of the glorious O. crispum, each bearing one or two spikes of flower, which trail down, interlace, arch upward.  Not all are in bloom; that amazing sight may be witnessed for a month to come—­for two months, with such small traces of decay as the casual visitor would not notice.  So long and dense are the wreaths, so broad the flowers, that the structure seems to be festooned from top to bottom with snowy garlands.  But there is more.  Overhead hang rows of baskets, lessening in perspective, with pendent sprays of bloom.  And broad tables which edge the walls beneath that staging display some thousands still, smaller but not less beautiful.  A sight which words could not portray.  I yield in despair.