Atkinson's Experiments on heating by hot Water. 423 



gardens of the best growers about Lancaster, in order to ob- 

 tain information on this subject for the use of the Gardener's 

 Magazine. One thing practised by one of the cultivators he 

 visited deserves notice; in planting cuttings, this cultivator 

 ties a little moss round the lower part of the cutting, and this 

 moss is said to cause it to strike stronger roots. Mr. Saul 

 states, also, that the cultivation of the gooseberry, among the 

 most successful growers, is in a way of progressive improve- 

 ment. — J. M.,for Cond. 



Art. XIII. Some Account of the Experiments made by Wil- 

 liam Atkinson^ Esq. F.H.S., which led to the Heating of 

 Hot-houses by hot Water. By Mr. John Barrow, Manu- 

 facturing Smith. 



Sir, 



As I find the heating of forcing-houses with hot water is 

 rapidly coming into use, and as I hear that different persons 

 not entitled to it are claiming the invention, perhaps some 

 account of the discovery, as far as I am acquainted with it, 

 may not be uninteresting. 



In the early part of the year 1822, Mr. Atkinson, architect, 

 of Grove End, mentioned to me an idea that he had of heat- 

 ing forcing-houses with hot water, to flow in metal pipes, 

 which he then explained by a sketch in pencil, and informed 

 me that what led him to think it would answer, was an ex- 

 periment he had seen made by the late Count Rumford, 

 about the year 1 799, which proved that water is not a con- 

 ductor of heat, or that one particle of water will not give off 

 its heat by coming in contact with another ; that, in heat- 

 ing water, the bottom of a boiler receiving its heat from the 

 combustion of the fuel underneath, the particles of water re- 

 ceive their heat in succession as they come in contact with the 

 bottom of the boiler, and, as they become heated, immedi- 

 diately ascend to the surface, without giving off heat to the 

 cold particles they pass through in ascending ; and as the hot 

 particles ascend the cold descend, till the whole mass is 

 heated, and goes off in steam. * (See Count Rumford' s Es- 

 says, vol. ii.) 



* The fallacy of Count Rumford's opinions regarding the non-conduct- 

 ing power of fluids, was experimentally proved both by Dr. Thomas Thom- 

 son and by the late Mr. William Nicholson ; they heated fluids by applying 

 heat at the upper surface only. (Nicholson's Philos. Journal, 8vo series.) 

 Water heats, however, much more rapidly from below. — Cond. 



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