32 BRITISH MODES OF CULTIVATING 



deal, closely jointed : the length eleven feet, divid- 

 ed equally into four lights ; the width seven feet and 

 a half; three feet high at the back, and about ten 

 inches in front. The pit was somewhat more than 

 five feet deep in the ground ; the sides were lined 

 with brick, and the bottom covered with pebbles. 



The stove or fruiting-house used was that with 

 iron plates over the flues ; which, for greater warmth, 

 was covered thick with thatch, and the glasses Were 

 well guarded with shutters ; and that the fire might 

 be constant, he burnt only such turf as is com- 

 monly used in Holland, agreeable to M. Le Cour's 

 method. 



General Management. About the middle of 

 February, he " puts in as much hot dung or horse- 

 litter as will raise the bed about a foot high, and 

 then lays on the tanner's bark as equally as possible, 

 till the case of brick- work is filled, beating down the 

 tan gently with a prong, or pressing it down easily 

 with a board. A bed of this kind will take up three 

 hundred bushels of tan, and if it be well made, will 

 heat in about fifteen days, provided the frame and 

 glasses are set over it. When the bed breathes a 

 right heat, which we are to judge of by a thermo- 

 meter, the plants are brought from the stove to it, 

 either to have their pots quite plunged into the 

 bark ; or, if upon opening the holes for them, the 

 bark be found too hot, then to be set in only half 

 way, laying a few pebbles under the bottom of each 

 pot, that the water may pass freely through them. 

 Care must be taken not to remove the pots in frost 



