THE PINE APPLE. 173 



and the opinions of gardeners are yet too unsettled 

 on its merits to enable us to recommend it for 

 adoption in general practice. For heating the at- 

 mosphere of hot-houses, there seems little (or at 

 least much less) doubt of its being preferable to 

 fire-heat. 



Count Zubow, at St. Petersburg, employed steam 

 to heat a pit or cistern of water, over which, at about 

 three inches distance, a frame, covered with fag- 

 gots, was placed, and on this was laid the earth, in 

 which his Pines and other exotics were planted with- 

 out being in pots. The plan is said to have suc- 

 ceeded, and a wholesome temperature to have been 

 obtained and communicated to the mould above 

 the faggots. 



Mr. Gunter, as before observed, (Chap. IV. 

 sect. 13.) had already tried the use of steam as a 

 bottom heat without success. 



Mr. John Hay, horticultural architect, tried the 

 use of steam so early as 1794, when gardener at 

 Preston Hall, near Edinburgh, and he gives the 

 following account of his apparatus and success in 

 the Memoirs of the Caledonian Horticultural So- 

 ciety. " The application of steam to forcing- 

 houses early caught my attention. The first that 

 I designed and executed in Scotland on this plan, 

 were at Preston Hall in Mid-Lothian, in the year 

 1794. The fruiting Pine-stove, which is in the 

 general suite of houses, with two peach-houses on 

 the west, were originally adapted to steam. I ern- 



