MISCELLANEOUS INTELLIGENCE. 1 7 9 



one stem, renders mine a rare specimen of the kind. Though from its first 

 expanded blossom it is now about three weeks, there are yet fifteen more 

 blossoms to open. 

 Chipping Norton. G. M. Smith. 



[It is ; we shall be obliged by any remarks on its culture, addressed to us at 

 Downham, Norfolk. — Conductor.] 



On the Tank System or Heating. — Last autumn I had a small greenhouse 

 fitted up to be heated on the tank system, and which I have found to succeed 

 well, keeping up a due degree of warmth, and not (as one of your correspondents, 

 in the last number of the Cabinet, states,) " affording too moist an atmosphere 

 for winter to a greenhouse." 



My boiler is a small one of Rogers's ; the gutters (a proceeding and return 

 one) are fixed along one end and the front of the house. They are raised two 

 feet above the floor, formed of brick, and cemented inside. I have slate cover- 

 ings, a quarter of an inch thick, over the gutters, and raise one or more at 

 different parts of the gutter, so as to admit a regular portion and distribution of 

 moist temperature in every part of the house. 



Clericus. 



Tank system ok Heating. — We have visited several establishments where the 

 tank system of heating by hot water in open gutters, &c, were adopted last 

 autumn, and the managers having had a winter and spring experience, they were 

 enabled to speak of its merits. 



For heating a greenhouse, conservatory, or pit, where what is termed green- 

 house [plants of the usual kinds, are grown, the moisture is found to be so 

 excessive, that they have been completely saturated and many damped off, 

 although the usual precaution was taken by slate covers to check the moisture. 



It had been employed in several instances to heat pits, by having the tank or 

 troughs extending along underneath, but even then the moisture had come 

 through the bank or soil too much, and there had been a fire flue constructed 

 along the front of the pit, in two instances, in order to dry up the excess of 

 moisture in the upper space. The fire flue was heated from the boiler fire. This 

 had answered expectation. A house, or pit, so constructed, to confine the 

 moisture under the materials of the pit, to plunge pots of cuttings in, answers 

 well from March to October, and the best material to plunge the pots in is fine 

 bed or river sand. We saw a pit with numerous pots of cuttings in flourishing 

 amazingly, and almost universally succeeding. 



A few pipes had passed through the sand from the ^chamber to the upper 

 space ; when moist vapour was required for the upper space, the plugs, which 

 were put in the tops of the pipes, were taken out for the period required. 



For Orchidese and other plants which can bear excess of moisture, the plan 

 of heating in opeir troughs may do ; we shall give particulars of such in our 

 next. Of the construction, &c, of boilers, troughs, and tanks. 



Conductor. 



On American, or Mealy Big. — Having a Chinese Apple-tree in my shrub- 

 bery, it had for two years become infested with the Mealy, or American Bug. 

 In order to destroy it, in February 1842, I took a quantity of the finest brick- 

 makers' clay from a brickyard, and carefully coated the tree over with it, as far 

 as the insect infested it. This, by excluding the air from the insects, soon 

 destroyed them. The coating came off by natural causes. I kept the diseased 

 portions plastered over the entire year, and it so answered the purpose that not a 

 vestige of the insect has been seen since February, 1842. 



Andover. ' Clericus. 



Oil THE Spotted Leaves oi' Pelargoniums. — Last year I forwarded some 

 leaves of Pelargoniums which were frightfully spotted, us if affected by miidew. 



