146 Polmaise Method of Heathig Hothouses. 



for which it is intended ; but his advice is taken, and the 

 consequence is, an apparatus is fitted up as unsuitable to the 

 house as can well be imagined, displaying as much igno- 

 rance of the principles of heating, as the most enthusiastic 

 experimental novice could desire ; a double cost in the be- 

 ginning, and often a triple cost for the rest of its existence ; 

 and the gentleman must have more than ordinary patience, 

 and the enthusiasm of a true lover of exotic horticulture, if 

 he does not abandon the pursuit, as a toy far too expensive 

 for the small amount of pleasure it affords. [Too true. — Ed.] 



The essentials for heating churches are as different from 

 those of hothouses, as the purposes for which these structures 

 are applied ; and though the former are generally larger than 

 the latter, it must be considered that the same apparatus that 

 would warm a hothouse in a frosty night, would heat a 

 church ten times the size, if from no other cause than the 

 escape of heated air, and the continual radiation of heat 

 from the glass. Again, the defects of an apparatus may be 

 imperceptible in a public building, which, in a hothouse, 

 would soon prove destructive to tender plants ; of this fact 

 any person may very soon convince himself. And every 

 gardener is aware, that plants are more susceptible than ani- 

 mals of the effects of heat and air, moisture and aridity : so 

 much is this the case, that, with many kinds of plants, suc- 

 cess in their culture, and even in keeping them alive, depends 

 upon certain minute points of practice, which are often diffi- 

 cult to discover, — and when discovered, frequently as difficult 

 at all times to pursue. 



To discuss the various merits and defects of the numerous 

 systems of heating, brought before the public of late years, 

 would require a volume, as huge in its dimensions as Loudon's 

 celebrated Encyclopasdia of Gardening, and that great wri- 

 ter's herculean powers of compilation. My purpose, for the 

 present, at least, is only to make a few remarks on a system 

 which has created more sensation in Europe, than any thing 

 which has been brought before the gardening public for the 

 last hundred years, — which has been commented on in the 

 English journals, nearly as much as the potato disease, — which 



