ERE is a white hermit in Colombian wilds, with monkeys, parrots and savages for company; his dwelling a hut of bamboo poles, thatched with cocoa leaves, on the Rio Magdalena; his food banana-roots and raw sugar; his object -to get orchids for the city's market.

The man crosses mountains with his caravan of loaded mules, and is assailed by floods; labors hip deep in the morass, whose feverish mists are food for the glorious floral parasites high up on the trunks of forest trees.

But no hardship counts if the store of cattleyas and odontoglossums grows great; if the air-feeding plants are seen in plenty, lighting the jungle gloom with their superb floral spikes; if at the season's end he can despatch one hundred and fifty cases of the dried plant packed in sphagnum moss down to Savanilla, there to catch the steamer north.

But the orchid hunter, after all, is but a free lance-a mere scout of an army 18,000 strong engaged in our harvest of flowers from ocean to ocean, and to this number we must add thousands of extra hands outside America. There is Bermuda, for instance, which lives largely by lilies-$100,000 worth a year grown for the Atlantic states.

Here is a fifty-acre field of tall swaying blooms whose fragrant snows melt

away in the green flanks of a distant hill. Planted in autumn, the bulbs develop into a mass of lovely blossom by the following March and are

ready for the Easter trade. And they are packed so carefully in the divided cases as to avoid all risk of crushing during the seven hundred mile trip. Indeed, on arrival the half-open buds will blossom forth and remain fresh for a fortnight in the homes or churches of New York, Boston or Philadelphia.

And far away up the busy Cantor river, too, are beds of the Chinese sacred lily, being likewise grown for our homes. "But," said our Washington experts, "if an acre of lilies be worth $1,500, why not grow them in our own southeastern states?" Bermuda sends us more than 3,000,000 bulbs every year, whereas if only freight rates were lower no better soil on earth could be found for their propagation than that of Olaa in Hawaii, where three crops a year may be looked for.

And so seedling plants of Lilium Harisii were imported from Japan and experimented with in the greenhouses of the department of agriculture. Tiny fragile things, they were; one hundred of them would go into a woman's thimble, yet they were expected to flower in seven months in this new strange land.

It seemed a pity we should be paying out nearly two millions a year for imported floral products, excluding seeds, when we might grow all the flowers and plants we need between Virginia and Texas, with cheap land to offset the foreigner's cheap labor. Little Holland alone sends us a million dollars' worth of bulbs from great nurseries below sea level, and out of them we get $250,000 in duty. Then the French Riviera grows for us two million bulbs of the Roman hyacinth alone; and there are besides the pansies of Normandy, the gloxianas, azaleas, and begonias of Ghent, with many another source more than glad to have prosperous and cultured America for a customer.

But all these foreign accessories assume their proper proportions when the immense magnitude of our home traffic in flowers is considered. For we have in this country between 9,000 and 10,000 considerable establishments growing and selling cut blooms; this is a conservative estimate, and does not include the smaller people.

30,000,000 square feet. New York state is credited with 1,200 important houses and 4,500,000 square feet; Illinois with nine hundred establishments and 5,000,000 square feet; and Pennsylvania with nine hundred and 4,000,000, respectively. Ohio and New Jersey rank next.

The business-clearly an indication of refinement and taste-has developed most rapidly in Illinois. One grower in this state added 163,275 square feet of glass in a single season, and now has over twenty-five acres in solid blocks, with not a detached house in the place. And the whole crystal palace is devoted exclusively to roses and carnations, of which new varieties are constantly being introduced. Thus a superb new carnation was produced last season, making no useless grass and shooting up to four feet by New Year's day, with a lovely bloom four inches in diameter. The ground color is a delicate white overlaid with pink, in mottles deepening to the center. One dollar a blossom is the retail price of such a flower in our great cities.

grown and handled; one establishment alone in that center has upwards of 7,000 feet of sale room.

The value put upon all the flower growing establishments of the United States, including boilers and fixtures, is fixed at fifty cents for each square foot of glass. Thus, on the basis of only 22,500,000 feet, we have a sum of $11,250,000. And the producer's income will be the same-fifty cents for each square foot of glass. Now, doubling this amount in the case of the retailer we have all America paying the enormous annual sum of $22,500,000 for lovely blooms and ornamental plants in the home. Surely a healthy symptom of national taste, thus commented upon by Professor B. T. Galloway, of the bureau of plant industry at Washington: "Increasing love of flowers," he says, "denotes a growing refinement; a higher appreciation of all things artistic, which promises well alike for individual and nation."

Now, since our flower-farmers live literally in glass houses they must guard against the heavens throwing stones-a very real danger. Accordingly they have formed a co-operative society known as the Florists' Hail associationa purely private and non-money making concern, whose subscribers insured last year 25,056,546 feet of glass. It is an interesting fact that the trade itself took up successfully a line of insurance which capitalists would not dare to handle.

The idea originated in Germany. Strange to say, while 1905 brought the heaviest hail loss of any year in the society's history-$19,817-last year saw the lowest sum of all paid out in damages. Altogether sixty-eight losses were paid, representing a breakage of 58,357

square feet of glass. Missouri headed the list with claims for $722, then came New York with $688, Nebraska $568, and Illinois $496.

As the photographs sent in with claims clearly show, Heaven's artillery may do as much damage in one minute as many mischievous boys could in a month, even if given a free hand in the work of destruction.

The growth of an industry so nationally significant as that of flower-farming took more than a

generation. A century ago our forebears had no time for the refined amenities of life. Every available man was urgently needed to conquer the wilderness. And as wealth gradually concentrated in the cities, there it was the demand first sprang up for costly flowers at all seasons and for all functions, from baby's christening on through life even unto its end. Philadelphia was perhaps the earliest in the floral field, followed by New York and Boston.

The greenhouse of the forties was a pretty crude affair, however. Only the sides and ends were of glass, and heating was done by means of hot air, carried in through perforated bricks. Yet even thus early a fair trade was done in camelias, tuberoses, azaleas, rhododendrons, fuchsias, pelargoniums, and, to some extent, roses.

The hot water heating apparatus marked an epoch; and by 1860 our big cities were beginning to call imperatively for cut flowers. The rose, now queen of them all, grew rapidly in importance, especially La Marque and Bon Silène, together with such bulbous varieties as gladioli and lilies.

But the bouquet in those days was an

absurdly formal thing of tuberoses and waxen camelias, bordered with Bristol board, and with an edging of silk fringe such as our floral artists of today look back upon with amusement. Homes were decorated for weddings with flowers contorted into hearts, cupid's darts and bows, and even balls of buds, massed in solids and suspended in the drawing

room.

The Civil War naturally checked the growing taste; and it was not until 1870, when the carnation came to us from Europe, that the present amazing progress in scientific floriculture really began. At that time specialization was undreamed of; but now the imperious demand compelled growers to turn their thoughts to the exclusive production, first of roses, of carnations next, and then of violets.

These last were first grown in frames and then in sunken pits, which in turn gave place to the modern violet house as we know it today in the Hudson River section of New York, which turns out an almost perfect flower fetching $6 a hundred at retail.

And gradually the general gardener disappeared and the expert specialist took his place; thus we have today the national rose society, a carnation society, a chrysanthemum society, and similar bodies, organized with the object of studying how a certain lovely and universally appreciated flower may be brought to its uttermost perfection. And today perhaps 20,000 men are catering to the floral tastes of America's cultivated millions, who insist on having in their homes the most gorgeous blooms

that nature and art can produce and that at all seasons of the year.

And, by the way, the retail prices paid in a great city like New York or Chicago are quite startling. Thus, fine American Beauties at Christmas and New Year's will fetch $36 a dozen, carnations $6, cattleya orchids $15. One grower of Madison, N. J., took into New York three hundred buds of the General Jacqueminot rose and got $300 for the

THE SPRING HARVEST OF DAFFODILS.

lot. They probably retailed at $2 each. The favorite roses grown in large quantities, besides American Beauties, are the Bride, Bridesmaid, and Meteor; with Perle Niphetos and Madame Hoste in lesser quantities. The Ulrich Brunner and General Jacqueminot figure in the spring trade, while in summer the glorious Kaiserin Augusta Victoria bursts upon us in all her regal splendor. But if such perfect and beautiful flowers bring large prices, the risks and expense of their production are proportionately great.

The demand from the cities is so large and constant as to call for immense floral establishments in the suburbs. One