186 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



MEETING FOR DISCUSSION. 



Saturday, March 24, 1894. 



A Meeting for Discussion was holden at eleven o'clock, the 

 President, Nathaniel T. Kidder, in the chair. The following 

 paper was read by the author : 



Vegetables Under Glass. 



By AViLMAji D. Philbriok, Newton Centre. 



The art of forcing vegetables is a very old one ; indeed, it is 

 older than that of glass making. We are told that the gardener 

 of the Roman Emperor Tiberius knew how to gratify the luxur- 

 ious taste of his master by supplying his table with cucumbers 

 throughout the entire year ; and that they were forced during the 

 winter season by growing them in baskets of fermenting manure 

 covered with loam, and protected at night by removing them under 

 shelter of some building, but in the day time they were sheltered 

 under very large plates of talc or mica. This is the earliest 

 account of a hotbed of which there is any record, and dates at 

 the second century of our era, when glass was very slightly known 

 as a material for windows, if, indeed, it was used then at all for 

 this purpose. 



Comparatively little seems to have been done during the so- 

 called middle ages in the way of gardening under glass ; such 

 arts did not flourish under the bloody wars and savage habits 

 which prevailed in those times. But we read of a shelter built b}^ 

 one Solomon de Cans at Heidelberg, Germany, in 1619, for 

 storing orange trees during the winter. It was built with glass 

 sides but was covered with an opaque roof, and nothing is said 

 about any artificial method of heating it. A greenhouse for 

 groAving fruit trees was built at Chelsea, in England, about 1664, 

 with glass sides and opaque roof, and a siniilar structure was 

 erected at New 'York in 1764. 



But the general use of the hotbed and greenhouse for forcing 

 vegetables, fruits, and flowers, out of season, is a comparatively 

 recent practice, and except in the gardens of the wealthy very 

 little of such woi'k was done till within about fifty years. 



At present, as every one knows, their use is almost universal, 

 and no gardener, of howsoever humble pretensions, attempts to 



