146 Cottage Husbandry and Architecture. 



be made in the floor, we would effect heating by a very simple stove com- 

 posed of common bricks and paving tiles, and occupying the whole, or a 

 part of one side of the room. This side should always be one of the inner 

 sides in cottages already built, and in cottages to be built, the stove may in 

 almost every case be made to serve as a partition wall. Cooking we would 

 effect in open fire-places as at present, and either with large wood, that is, 

 pieces of 2 in. and 3 in. diameter, or with the half-charred faggot wood that 

 is produced in stove fires when the furnace and ash-pit door are closed 

 before combustion is completed. Whoever has seen the heating and the 

 cooking of the Continent will allow that the methods we have proposed 

 would completely answer the ends in view, and, to all who could not pur- 

 chase coal, be a great improvement in the economy of fuel. 



Having shown how we propose to apply faggot wood to the purposes of 

 heating and cooking, we shall next endeavour to show that 1 acre of land 

 of middling quality will produce a sufficiency of this wood for an ordinary 

 cottager. 



In order to ascertain what quantity of ground will grow a faggot,, we 

 shall consider a faggot to consist of eighty black Italian or Lombardy pop- 

 lars, or Huntingdon willows, of three years' growth. These we shall sup- 

 pose to be grown in rows, 2 ft. apart, and the plants 6 in. distant in the 

 row. At this rate every plant will occupy a square foot, and as there are 

 43,560 ft. in an acre, that space will consequently produce 544 faggots every 

 third year, or every year 181 faggots of three years' growth, which are thir- 

 teen more than will be wanted for the purposes of baking and warming through- 

 out the year. Now these 13 faggots being composed of 1040 shoots, say only 

 1000, suppose them to be distributed at equal distances throughout the acre, 

 and allowed to attain five years' growth instead of three, this will give 200 

 trees a year, three fourths of the length of which will cut up into bundles of 

 billet wood from 2 in. to 5 in. in diameter for cooking on the open fire j and 

 the side spray, and the remaining third part of the stem, may be made into 

 faggots, to make good the requisite number for the oven, or to compensate 

 the injury which these 1000 larger trees may do to the 33,560 amongwhich 

 they are placed: this calculation we think is sufficient to show that an acre 

 of wood applied to cottages on our construction, and probably even to those 

 on the ordinary plan, will supply fuel for every year. We are confirmed in 

 this calculation by several experienced gardeners whom we have consulted 

 on the subject. When a plantation was once established perhaps the 

 simplest mode of management would be, to fill a fifth part every year, 

 separating the larger wood for the open fires, and faggoting up the smaller 

 for the oven. 



When a part of the fuel can be purchased, say coal, or turf for the open 

 fires, half an acre might probably be found sufficient for the oven, more 

 especially if the garden were surrounded by a hedge in which were a few 

 poplars, and the interior contained a few standard fruit trees. The prunings 

 from all of these, and the occasional cutting down of a poplar, would become 

 effective to a certain extent both in the oven or stove for heating, and in 

 the open fire-place, * 



Whatever quantity of ground is allotted should be trenched 3 ft. deep 

 at least; but, if the soil is dry, it may be trenched 5 ft., not casting the top 

 in the bottom, but mixing them together. (Enci/c. of Gard., § 1870.) A 

 plantation so formed would give a produce very superior to that of com- 



* John Denson says, " that the haulm of half an acre of potatoes will 

 serve for heating a cottager's oven ; " but we would rather litter the pig 

 with the haulm, and no doubt he would agree with us in opinion had he fuei 

 otherwise provided. 



