430 Transactions of the Horticultural Society. 



21. On the Management of Hot-house Flues, so as to keep up a 

 nearly equal Temperature during the Night. In a Letter to the 

 Secretary. By the Reverend George Swayne, Corresponding 

 Member of the Horticultural Society. Read February 1. 

 1825. 



Mr. Swayne " feels pity for those among the successors to the 

 primitive employment of our first parents, who have to attend 

 to the modern refinement now very generally attached to that 

 employ, namely, the forcing department and the culture of 

 exotics. Whilst the rest of the servants of an establishment 

 are usually enjoying themselves before a comfortable fire, or 

 in their warm beds, the poor gardener is obliged to encounter 

 the pitiless pelting of rain, snow, or hail, the cold pulses of 

 ihe frosty air, or the piercing shafts of the northerly blasts, 

 in regularly pacing to and from his furnace (in many cases, no 

 doubt, at a considerable distance from his lodgings,) without 

 the allowance of a single intermission during the tedious 

 winter. But surely these matters may be managed otherwise." 



Finding that a common baking oven, after being heated, re- 

 tains a high degree of heat for twenty or thirty hours, Mr. S. 

 proposes to apply the principle to the heating of hot-houses, by 

 closing up the furnaces and flues, after they have been properly 

 heated at an early hour in the evening, and reopening them, 

 and rekindling the fires, at an hour not inconvenient in the 

 morning, at once sparing the gardener's nightly rest, and the 

 the master's coal-heap. 



The remainder of the paper is occupied chiefly in describ- 

 ing a moveable iron cap to close the chimney pot, and a Welsh 

 slate to set against the furnace and ash-hole, so as effectually to 

 exclude air at both places. Mr. S. refers to Mr. Atkinson's 

 excellent paper on the management of furnaces (Gard. Mag. 

 p. 167.), and probably if the double doors and ash-pit registers 

 recommended in that paper were employed, the large slate re- 

 commended by Mr. Swayne might be dispensed with. As to 

 the cap to fit the chimney top, it is so unsightly an object, that 

 we greatly prefer the usual description of damper. Indeed, 

 as flues are generally built, we are not sure that it is desirable 

 to have the smoke and heated air confined by air-tight cover- 

 ings at their Orifices. Between Mr. Atkinson's directions, and 

 Mr. Swayne's suggestions, the judicious gardener will be en- 

 abled to improve upon common practices, and by aiming at 

 the retention of heat in the flues, save both labour and fuel. 



