126 GLASS HOUSES. 



readily be dispensed with, were it not for the lap in the roofing 

 materials. 



Having thus far premised, I must break the subject at once ; 

 and, although I foresee all sorts of opposition to the plan, I 

 have no hesitation in stating that, for all purposes for which 

 glass houses are used, provided their roofs remain stationary all 

 the year (and this includes nine-tenths of the glass houses in 

 Britain), the flat roof, such as is employed for sheets of lead, is 

 decidedly the best, and by at least 30 per cent, the cheapest. 

 The cucumber-grower pitches his roof almost perpendicular, to 

 catch the winter sun, and does wonders with it, saying tri- 

 umphantly, " Look here ; is not this far before the old-fashioned 

 flat-roofed plan ? '' Now, as this will be a general cry, I will 

 meet it, and state that I condemn the roof of little slope, mariy 

 laps, and many drips. These old roofs sloped to the south, 

 mine does not ; they had laps, mine has none. And in order to 

 see clearly about the affair of slopes, let us suppose a white horse 

 on the face of a hill — which really does exist in a certain 

 locality — and when the sun shines on it you can see it for miles, 

 if you are at a certain elevation. Now just go round to the 

 90th degree from where you stood before, and the horse is gone : 

 you have got an end now, you were then abreast. But if tlie white 

 chalk horse were placed on Salisbury Plain, and you were to 

 take the view from the spire of the cathedral, you would see 

 him quite plain at ten miles off; and if you were to go the 

 whole 180 degrees, or at any degree, you would stil! see all the 

 horse from a like elevation. I am sorry to be compelled to em- 

 body this subject thus in order to make it plain ; but I maintain 

 that all slopes in glass house roofs injure the cliaracter of the 

 zone of climate inside, and the plants literally long (for they 

 elongate their structure) to get to the full sun near the glass, 

 and the globular form of the head of most plants points out that 

 they are tied to the earth equally on all sides, and obey the 

 vertical and liorizontal lines. The steep pitched roof facing the 

 south will aid the early forcing of cucumbers, since the sun's 

 rays are confined to that part of the compass lying between 

 south-east and south-west in the depth of winter ; and the ridge 

 and furrow roof is admirably adapted for peach-forcing, as it 

 admits rays of light direct from the sun at 6 in the morning, 

 and again at 6 in the evening. 



But as it is only by figures that the true state of affairs can 

 be tested, and as many a bankrupt thought himself doing well 

 until he balanced his books, so I am forced to appeal to facts 

 and figures to meet the host that would assail any luckless wight 

 that might dare to doubt- the propriety of ridge and furrow, even 

 in an economical point of view. The ordinary lean-to roof 

 takes, in its cross-section, about 13i feet to roof a horizontal 



