In both these systems the universal fuel has been, until within the past few years, hard or soft coal. Now, after the steam or hot-water boiler has been set up, the whole question of the economy of fuel depends on the man who tends the fire. It is the stoker who controls in many a florist's establishment the whole matter of profit and loss. The coal bill is in every plant house the one item that demands the greatest attention. The labor bill may be much larger, but labor is profitable in direct proportion to its cost. The more men in a plant house, the more plants produced. Coal must be used and the less coal required the less the actual cost of producing the plants. If one ton will carry one thousand plants one month in a certain house and in another house the same ton will carry two thousand plants, clearly the cost of growing plants in the second house is one-half of that in the first and the margin of profit is so much the larger.

The stoker does not have a happy lot. There is dust, heat, cinders and plenty of dirty work. It is not exactly a nice trade and, too often, the work of the stoker is left to the lowest intelligence on the working force. In too many horticultural establishments the work of stoking is left to anybody who is willing to do the work for the lowest wages. It is said there are only two people can make a fire - a fool and a philosopher. Now it is not good business to employ any one but a philosopher. Not your conventional fellow in glasses, who potters about over scientific nothings, but a man of sense who understands why and how coal burns, a man who understands how a fire is controlled every day and night by the clouds, the wind and the sun. If there is any one man who should look after the fires in a greenhouse it is the "boss," the owner, or man most directly interested in the coal bill. As he cannot do it, the best plan is to train or find a first-class stoker and pay him good wages. Any one can tell whether a stoker of a greenhouse knows his business by looking at the paths in the garden. They are often made of ashes, and if bits of coal are to be seen among the ashes the stoker is wasting at least fifty per cent. of the fuel and the owner is paying double rates for coal.

Except in continuously fired steam boilers where steam is used for high powers, as on ships and in factories, all boilers discharge more or less unburned coal mingled with the ashes. It is a general and always wasteful practice in our dwellings and in oar plant houses to throw this coal away. It is the disgrace of many of our village streets that the sidewalks are paved with tons of good unburned coal. People complain of the expense of coal in their ranges and furnaces and permit the cook and the furnace-man to throw half of every ton into the ash bin. In all our large cities hundreds of families depend wholly on the city dust-heaps for their fuel.