258 THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 



Portable furnaces are quite as much in request as portable hothouses ; 

 but we have hitherto been left in the lurch in this respect, and when we 

 have constructed our houses so that the freeholder had no claim upon 

 them, the heating apparatus has upset our cunning by requiring to be 

 fixed in the fashion of a legal building. More than twelve months since, 

 we made a venture on the purchase of a stove, which we expected would 

 prove of the highest value for heating plant-houses, and wc have deferred 

 all mention of it till now, simply because we were not in a position either 

 to condemn it or recommend it. Wanting a heating apparatus for a small 

 lean-to in a cold corner, beside the dwelling-house, where any ordinary 

 furnace would have been objectionable, and where gas, because of the 

 distance of the house from the main would have been too expensive, we 

 obtained one of Musgrave's slow- combustion stoves, put it in position, 

 carried an iron flue round the house, and then found that we had an em- 

 blem of Vesuvius in a nut-shell, for it was about four times too powerful, 

 and had to be removed at once to save the plants from the process of cook- 

 ing. We had at the time a number of foreign birds, along with some 

 large vessels containing marine zoophytes and fresh-water fishes in the 

 entrance-hall. The fearful frost of October, 18-59, burst one of the large 

 aquaria, and killed the last of our Australian parakeets, and we determined 

 to place the stove there as a protection against such accidents in the future. 

 This hall communicates with the drawing and sitting-rooms by an archway 

 on one side, where the stairs ascend to the upper rooms. The stove was 

 placed in the corner most remote from the arched entrance, and fitted with 

 an iron pipe carried up through the roof, and with a mushroom top, three 

 feet from the roofing slates, the high wall of the house being close beside 

 it. The heat given out was steady and genial ; it required feeding only 

 twice, or at most three times in twenty-four hours, and after burning all 

 night, there was enough fire left in the morning to carry it on again all 

 day with a fresh feeding of small coke. But there was one grave objec- 

 tion, the upper rooms were filled with an unpleasant and oppressive odour 

 of burning coke, and unless the windows were kept open, carbonic acid 

 collected in sufficient quantity to be injurious to health. Had we reported 

 on the stove at that time, we should have pronounced it most unfit for 

 heating any place where either animals or plants were to be preserved. But 

 there were two circumstances that required consideration. The pipe or 

 chimney outside was lower than the adjoining wall. Every one expe- 

 rienced in heating plant-houses knows that a fine so placed will very often 

 refuse to do its duty. Then, again, a four-inch pipe of sheet -iron is soon 

 cooled down bj' frost or cold wind, and a cool flue will rarely draw. By 

 this time the season had passed, and the stove was put out of sight. Re- 

 quiring a heating apparatus for a lean-to, twenty-four feet by nine feet, 

 sufficient to keep out frost, the stove was tried once more, this time with 

 a four-inch glazed drain-pipe flue, carried up six feet from the point of 

 junction with the iron pipe, and in a position altogether free from neigh- 

 bouring walls. It answered to perfection from the very first, gives a heat 

 as sweet and steady as hot water, occasions less trouble than any similar 

 plan of heating we have ever had to do with, and is evidently the very 

 thing that was required for portable houses, for it need not touch the soil 

 at all — and certainly requires no kind of fixing in it. 



The house in which this stove is placed has a sunk path along the back, 

 and a raised border of earth along the front. The sill rests on a row of 



