BOOK III. PRINCIPLES OF DESIGN IN HOT-HOUSES. 



311 



Messrs. Sweets and Miller - Bristol - - 1 



Thomas Fox, Esq. - Beaminster, Dorsetshire 1 



j" Green-house. T 40ft. long. 



; Gothic span roof, with folding doors at (he J. 15 ft. wide. 



L ends, and glaxed on all sides - - - \ 9 ft. 6 in. high. 



\ Grapery. 



I Plain sloping roof, a.* an addition to an old 



Charles Hutchins, Esq. - - ] "^"* 1 uare ' Lon " 1 1 < Opening sashes in front, and ventilators at C 10 ft.' wide. 



J i the ends \ 8 ft. high. 



James Burton, Esq. - - Regent's Park - - 1 

 Henry Seymour, Esq. - - {^um,_ Bedford- J , 



f Green-house. ~> 



} Circular laced roof, the bars fixed in a circu. I 

 ") lar cast-iron gutter, with wooden frame f 

 (. and'doors underneath - - . . . \ 



21 ft. diameter. 



roof, with r o^riing*tashes at the top 

 fixedto a wooden house. 



1588. Great emulation now exists in this department of horticulture, not only among 

 country gentlemen, but among commercial gardeners. One house for growing palms 

 and scitaminae, erected by Messrs. Loddiges, is 45 feet high and 60 feet wide, and 

 another by the same nurserymen for green-house plants, is 23 feet wide, 18 feet high, 

 and upwards of 100 feet long, without a single rafter or standard : and these spirited 

 cultivators, and also Messrs. Gunter, Grange, Wilmot, Andrews, and others, have 

 heated the whole of their extensive ranges of glass by steam. 



1589. The application of steam to the heating of hot-houses appears first to have been 

 attempted by Wakefield of Liverpool, in 1788, and afterwards effectually applied in 

 the vault of a cucumber-house at Knowle in that neighbourhood, by Butler, gardener 

 to the Earl of Derby, in 1792. It made little progress till about 1816, since which it 

 has extended rapidly, and wherever an extensive range of hot-houses are to be heated, it 

 will be found a saving of fuel and labor, attended with less risk of over heating or con- 

 tamination by bad air. 



1590. The grand cause of the improvements which have been made in hot-houses, may be 

 traced to their being no longer as formerly under the control of mansion architects. To 

 civil architecture, as far as respects mechanical and chemical principles, or the laws of the 

 strength and durability of materials, they are certainly subject in common with every 

 description of edifice ; but in respect to the principles of design or beauty, the found- 

 ation of which we consider, in works of utility at least, to be " fitness for the end in 

 view," they are no more subject to the rules of civil architecture, than is a ship or a 

 fortress ; for those forms and combinations of forms, and that composition of solids 

 and openings which are very fitting and beautiful in a habitation for man or domestic 

 animals, are by no means fitting, and consequently not beautiful in a habitation for 

 plants. Such, however, is the force of habit and professional bias, that it is not easy 

 to convince architects of this truth ; for structures for plants are considered by them no 

 further beautiful than as displaying not only something of architectural forms, but even 

 of opaque materials. Fitness for the end in view, we repeat, is the basis of all beauty 

 in works of use, and, therefore, the taste of architects so applied, may safely be pro- 

 nounced as radically wrong. We shall consider the subject of hot-houses as to the 

 principles of construction, external forms, and interior details. 



SUBSECT. 1. Of the Principles of Design in Hot-houses. 



1591. 'To ascertain the principles of action, it is always necessary to begin by consider- 

 ing the end in view. The object or end of hot-houses is to form habitations for veget- 

 ables, and either for such exotic plants as will not grow in the open air of the country 



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