and a more economical Mode of using Glass. 205 



parallel and only a few inches apart) have sufficient light with 

 a square yard of glass roof over every square yard of soil. Con- 

 tradict this who can. I have already in the Gardener's Magazine, 

 vol. xiii. p. 62., shown the suburban gentleman how to econo- 

 mise his culinary and fruit department, and to make two acres 

 produce as much as three acres do now, and of better quality; 

 or in other words by a different arrangement of his crops, and a 

 httle expense in trellising over his walks that now produce only 

 weeds and mud, this hitherto uninteresting department of a 

 suburban residence will become not only a profitable, but a 

 grateful and flowery promenade ; and, since it adds one third to 

 the produce of his property, as good as gives him another 

 garden half as large as that which he now possesses. I have 

 also shown him how to collect his garden structures in a group, 

 thereby saving much of the space they now occupy, and much 

 labour in attending them, when so widely scattered as they now 

 generally are ; and, as one hothouse will heip to heat another 

 closely adjoining it, one half of the fuel will serve, if properly 

 applied. Add, also, that much less than half the expense in 

 building materials will erect the group stronger and better than 

 the broken mass is at present in most gardens. 



I now offer, with the glass used in the common hand-light 

 above described, to roof more than three times the extent of 

 cucumber, cauliflower, or propagating bed, that that hand-glass 

 now covers, and that too in a far more substantial and less in- 

 tricate manner, the lights being simply a square or quarry of cast 

 iron of the annexed form {Jigs. 25. to 27. p. 207.) ; and though 

 the hand-glass can only be used to shelter dwarf crops on a hori- 

 zontal or slightly inclined plane, yet the quarry lights will not 

 Only light and shelter the same squares that hand-glasses are now 

 used for, but are also convertible into a roof adapted to the 

 culture of any exotic usually grown in British gardens, and, like 

 tiles or mosaics, may be used to roof or fill in any right-angled 

 figure, from the fancy awning over the ladies' own pet bed of 

 double early blue and white scented violets, which is, perhaps, 

 as near the earth as glass ever need be placed, up to the lofty 

 ridge and furrow roof which you so much admired at Counsellor 

 Harrison's and elsewhere. 



To the market-gardeners around London these quarry lights, 

 instead of hand-glasses or bell-glasses, would effect an immense 

 saving, were it only in the space of ground they take up to stand 

 on when idle, and in the labour they take to carry them by hand 

 from place to place. Hand-glasses are a very fragile and awk- 

 ward freight, either for cart or waggon ; whereas these quarries ^'^ 

 will ride safely at the rate of fifty in a wheelbarrow, and this 

 fifty will only occupy a cubic space of 25 in. on the side or 

 about 150 in a solid yard. When the season of one crop is 



