Transactions of the Horticultural Society. 



]87 



as great upon a small scale as upon a large one. Besides 

 this, there is a greater risk of explosion in a hot-house steam- 

 boiler than in that of a steam-engine; for steam-engines 

 generally have persons properly instructed to manage them, 

 but gardeners or their assistants cannot be so competent 



" The heating with hot water has none of the objections I 

 have mentioned as belonging to flues and steam. The appa- 

 ratus is simple, and not liable to get out of order. The 

 boiler has only a loose wooden cover, and no safety valves are 

 required. The fuel consumed is very moderate ; and, when 

 once the water is heated, very little attention is Wanted, for it 

 retains its heat for many hours after the fire has gone out." 



Mr. Bacon had, in 1822, put this mode of heating in prac- 

 tice on a small scale, at his seat at Abearnen, in Glamorgan- 

 shire; and Mr. Atkinson, the distinguished architect, had, at 

 his residence of Grove End, constructed a model of a similar 

 apparatus, without at the time having any communication with 

 Mr. Bacon, with which he tried the experiment successfully. 

 The garden at Elcot contains four houses for vines and 

 peaches, and also a pine pit heated with hot water, and Mr. 

 Whale gives the vinery as a specimen of the mode in which 

 this is effected. 



" The house {Jigs. 52. and 53.) is forty feet long and ten feet 

 wide inside, heated by a boiler (a), placed in a recess in the 



centre of the back wall : the fire-place under the wall is got 

 at from a back shed (b). The boiler is two feet six inches 

 long, one foot six inches wide, and one foot eight inches deep. 

 From the end of the boiler proceed, horizontally, four cast- 

 iron pipes of three and a half inches' diameter (c) : two of them 

 are joined to the boiler just above the bottom, and the other 



