HEATING GEEEXHOUSES. 201 



TVater-pipes will rust, and you are gone. He used a three-inch 

 wrought iron pipe for hot water eight years, and it was so filled 

 with rust that you could not see through it. Cast iron will not 

 rust so badly as wrought iron. Asphaltum is a poor conductor; 

 but it might pay to coat hot water pipes with it to prevent rust. 

 It has been proposed to use crude petroleum as a heating medium 

 instead of water, but it would be dangerous to introduce it into 

 pipes, for it contains water, which the heat would evaporate. 

 Besides, the inflammable vapors of petroleum are heavier than the 

 air, and if they escaped from the stand-pipe would flow to the fire- 

 room, and cause explosions . 



Levi W. Hastings said that he has had no experience with hot 

 water, but has used a steam-boiler like Mr. Hill's, but larger, for 

 the last three years, and found it satisfactory. He raises chiefly 

 roses and pinks. He has four houses, each one hundred feet long, 

 two of which are ten feet wide, one eighteen, and one twenty ; 

 making six thousand square feet, with span roofs, all heated by 

 one boiler. If you heat by means of water, and get up in a cold 

 night and find the pipes c<.»ld, it takes a good while to warm up ; 

 but he can get up steam in fifteen or twentv minutes. His boiler 

 works automatically ; he puts on a three-pound weight at night, 

 and gets up at six in the morning, and finds a pound pressure. 

 He uses about forty tons of coal in a season. He used from 

 fifteen to seventeen tons in the first house, and then added two 

 more houses and used thirty-five tons. The boiler did not work 

 well, and he put in a larger one, and he thinks he could run double 

 the number of houses he has now with ten tons more of coal. 



The Committee on Discussion announced for the next Saturday 

 a paper by Professor G. C. Caldwell, of Cornell University, 

 Ithaca, N.Y., on •• A Comparison of Manures for the Orchard 

 and Garden." 



BUSINESS MEETING. 



Sattrdat. March 28. 1885. 

 An adjourned meeting of the Society was holden at 11 o'clock, 

 the President, John B. Moore, in the chair. 



