180 Retrospective Criticism. 



that it is prepared with every possible care, not only to free it from the ill 

 taste which it is well known it too often possesses, but also, and which is 

 more important, from the deleterious principle which it contains when not 

 carefully made. (Gill's Technological Repository, Dec. 1827, p. 234.) 



Art. IX. Retrospective Criticism, 



Hot Water and Steam compared. — Sir, I am sorry I have not had the 

 opportunity of communicating to you, sooner, my opinion on the new 

 system of heating hot-houses by hot water, displayed in No. X. of your 

 Magazine (Vol. III. p. 196.), and in that, together with succeeding Numbers, 

 extolled above every system of heating hot-houses heretofore known or 

 practised. You would have received my opinion of that system sooner, 

 had I had the opportunity of sooner investigating its comparative merits. 

 The water system, you think, is calculated utterly to exterminate steam, as 

 a medium of conveying heat, from all gardens where it is now thus em- 

 ployed, and to erect an invulnerable and eternal barrier against its future 

 admission. My opinion of the plan is, that it is good, and one with which 

 many apparatuses for heating by steam can bear no comparison. I am 

 happy to see the invention of such a system, and, much more so, to see the 

 eagerness with which it is adopted. The former of these facts evinces the 

 rending of that veil which has for ages overspread the minds of men ; 

 and the latter proves the existence and increase of that spirit which 

 alone can perpetuate the effort to tear, completely, that veil from every 

 understanding J I mean a spirit to patronise a real, a meritorious improve- 

 ment. 



Yet while, from its own intrinsic nature, I hail the water system as an 

 improvement of considerable merit, yet I am bold to assert, that it is far 

 from being competent to the stupendous taskyouhave assigned it. To behold 

 it as an improvement in the system of forcing is just ; yet I cannot coun- 

 tenance your unwarrantable degradation of steam, when contrasted with it. 

 The water system you not only elevate to the very heavens, but steam, in 

 every possible mode of its employment, is, as it were, doomed to everlasting 

 perdition;; and this, too, not with a limitation to past modes of its adoption 

 and use, but this is done, without restriction, to all steam systems, past, 

 present, or to come. Sir, be not so hasty ; steam is powerful, its properties 

 amazing, and, if subjugated to right principles of action, as a medium of 

 conveying heat, its rival is yet unknown. 



Your answer to the question, p. 254. No. X., is, " We have little doubt 

 of hot water superseding both steam and smoke- flues, certainly steam." 

 But, I presume, I have a much firmer basis for the assertion, that steam will 

 be employed in gardens as a medium of conveying heat, when smoke-flues, 

 and the present eulogised water system, exist only in memory. No, Sir ; 

 to accomplish this, the water system is seriously defective in its fundamental 

 principles ; and I have no doubt in asserting, that its downfall, and utter 

 extermination from the forcing department, beneath the progressive and 

 all-subduing influence of steam, are as certain as its present existence. 



But, on page 191., I find a much more unwarrantable assertion than the 

 above, thus: — " At all events, we are certain of this, that steam will never 

 again be employed in gardening, as a medium of conveying heat." Sir, 

 suffer a man whose painful yet victorious experiments have taught him 

 better things, to tell you, that this your gigantic confidence must expire, 

 and that steam will be thus employed, when your bones and mine are not 

 only consigned to the dust, but when, in their amalgamation with new 



