1792. intelligence respecting arts. 335 . 
The circumstance that led him to the discovery, was 
the difficulty of finding ¢a#, in his particular situation. 
Chagrined at this, he began to reflect if it might not be 
pofsible to do without it.. It readily occurred to him, 
that heat and moisture are the two great agents in promo- 
_ting vegetation,and he thought, that if these two could be 
conjoined together, it could not fail to prove salutary; 
steam properly managed seemed to promise to dothis. He 
then contrived an apparatus by which water can be kept 
properly heated to transmit steam; and this steam, so ma- . 
-naged, as to be capable of acting either by its heat only, 
_or by its heat and moisture united, as circumstances fhould 
indicate to be proper; by means of flues, either horizon« 
tally disposed under a bed of earth, or in a perpendicular 
wall, both the soil, in which the plants grow, or the wall, 
to which they are nailed, can be heated to any degree 
wanted ; and by admitting the steam itself at pleasure, ¢i- 
ther into the body of the mould, or into the hot house, the 
plants may be subjected to a heated bath, if you please so 
to call it, which appears, by the experience he has had of 
it, to be wonderfully kindly to vegetation. The whole 
plant comes to be moistened with a warm vapour, which 
slowly condenses into a dew, which seems to penetrate 
every part of the leaf, and confers an envigorating frefh- 
nefs to the whole plant, that nothing else could have ef- 
fected. It is impofsible to conceive any thing more beau- 
tiful, luxuriant, and fruitful, than the vines I saw that had 
been reared by this mode of management. 
‘The world is indebted for this discovery to. Mr Wake- 
field of Liverpool, a gentleman, who, to indefatigable 
activity and industry, conjoins a spirit of research, and a 
talent for mechanical invention, that gives room to hope 
for many additional discoveries from that quarter ; among 
ethers, he has already made a machine 4or cutting chaff, 
