Constntetion of Hot-houses. 



539 



a most flourishing condition ; and the books are now access- 

 ible, at very easy rates, to all who are desirous of perusing 

 them. 



As Points in the Construction of Hot-houses, in the tract 

 under consideration, deserving particular attention, we shall, in 

 the first place, refer to what we have said, in our preceding 

 article, on the subject of wintering vines in pineries (p. 411.), 

 repeating the cut there given {Jig. 93.), on account of the letters 



having been wrongly placed; 

 a is the front wall and h the 

 4 in. wall within it. The mode 

 adopted in Staffordshire well 

 merits introduction in every 

 part of the country where pines 

 and vines are grown in the same 

 house ; indeed, we have seen no 

 plan at all to be compared with 

 it. Where an inner 4 in. wall 

 cannot be adopted, or where 

 there are no upright front sashes, then the next best plan of 

 wintering vines grown in a pinery is, to bring down the shoots, 

 and lay them along the bottom of the sloping glass as close up 

 to it as possible ; and then to interpose between them and the air 

 of the house a thick coating of matting or of straw, so as to 

 exclude the heated air on the one side, and to admit the cold 

 temperature of the open air through the glass to the vines on the 

 other. This is done at Croxteth Park, and at many other places, 

 where excellent grapes are grown in pineries ; but it is only 

 a make-shift, and not to be adopted in building a house. The 

 mode of heating by hot water we cannot too strongly recom- 

 mend for adoption every where, notwithstanding the prejudices 

 against it in some quarters, and, among others, in the botanic 

 garden at Liverpool. The most northerly point at which we 

 have yet seen this plan of heating adopted is at Carlton Hall, 

 near Penrith, where Messrs. Walker of St. John Square, 

 Clerkenwell, London, are heating a range of houses, in their 

 very excellent manner, and with perfect success. A much 

 less perfect system is adopted at Lowther Castle ; but which 

 system is still found by Mr. Ward, the gardener, to be very 

 superior to smoke flues. We have been rather surprised nofc 

 to find any curvilinear hot-houses farther north than Dallam 

 Tower. We are very desirous to see that elegant mode of 

 construction introduced among the lakes, and in the border 

 districts (we should like to see specimens at Storrs Hall, and at 

 Mrs. Starkey's), and have strongly recommended gardeners 

 to examine the range of houses erected in the Manchester 



