STYLE OF HOUSES FOR GROWING MARKET GRAPES. 



95 



useful to lift by, and it also serves as a guard, preventing any other 

 packages from being placed upon the Grapes. In the Channel Islands 

 service, they are packed on the steamers in layers ten or twelve deep, 

 hurdles being used to separate them from each other, and are generally 

 received in excellent condition. They leave Guernsey by the steamer 

 at about midday, and are delivered in London the same evening, in 

 time for market the following morning. 



It is not advisable to send Grapes to market on a Saturday. 



Structures, etc. These are in general very large, low, span- 

 roofed, and from one to two or three hundred feet in length. Some 

 of Mr. Bashford's houses measure eight hundred and ninety feet in 

 length by forty-four feet wide, and are remarkably well constructed. 

 Mr. Kay's houses vary from one to two hundred feet in length and 

 twenty-five feet in width, and are so low that the Vines may all be 

 attended to without steps or ladders. Seven span-roofed houses lately 



Fig. 3d. NEW PATENT HORIZONTAL TUBULAR BOILER. 



erected by Mr. Kay measure four hundred feet in length by thirty- 

 six feet six inches in width, occupying, with the borders outside and 

 inside, exactly seven acres. 



Messrs. Rochford's structures are so large as scarcely to be called 

 houses. They are mostly erected in great blocks like a number of 

 span-roofed houses joined together, or what might be termed ridge 

 and furrow roofs, covering the entire ground. Here is one block coverino- 

 thiee and a half acres of land, another over four acres, and so on 

 the individual spans twenty-eight feet wide and two hundred and 

 eighty feet in length, and many others of nearly equal dimensions- 

 all being efficiently heated. Mr. Thomson's houses at Clovenfords 

 are about two hundred feet long, rather lofty, and at a very acute 

 angle. 



Fig. 36 represents the sort of boiler now most generally used by 

 the market growers. These are made of all sizes, some we have 

 seen in use being twenty-five feet in length. They are very powerful, 

 simple, and easily repaired. 



