206 Substitute Jbr Hand-Glasses, 



over the market-gardener could convert in one summer day that 

 which yesterday was the roof of his early vinery into a field of 

 hand-glasses for gherkins. This is to be effected by having small 

 frames composed of four sawed boards, tarred (not painted), in 

 the form of a one-light box. {^g. 25.) Wood is cheaper and 

 stronger than glass for uprights, not to mention that by this 

 arrangement the market-gardener has three glasses for one ; and 

 by having all his glazed structures on this uniform plan he would 

 be enabled to force many small crops from plants in the open 

 ground, such as rhubarb, &c., by placing hot litter between the 

 beds, and something like a tulip awning, but stronger, for the 

 quarries to rest upon after the manner of a span roof over the 

 crowns of the plants. I give this as an example of what might 

 be done with a set of the quarries that could only be spared for 

 thirty or forty days ; but a peach-house, for example, is some- 

 times stripped of its glass to ripen and flavour the fruit: and if 

 the lights are large and clumsy, as they generally are, and cal- 

 culated to fit between no rafters but their own, they are perhaps 

 stored in the sheds till the forcing season commences again, for 

 a period of time during which they might have protected plants 

 or matured fruit of melons or the like, of as much value as their 

 crop of peaches. But I need say no more to recommend the 

 quarries ; for the value must be sufficiently obvious to every one, 

 of a uniform article of durable materials, so perfectly at the com- 

 mand of the proprietor and the practical man, exposing so small 

 a surface requiring paint, and, though firm and permanent in its 

 nature, as portable as a herdsman's tent. 



Gentlemen will build plant structures more liberally and 

 with greater confidence when they can rest assured that the 

 great body of the materials used will descend as heirlooms 

 unimpaired to their children's children, though it may have 

 changed places as often and as easily as the cards of a pack, 

 and like them also by various arrangements have played many 

 different games. 



Now for their economy. I have known good lights, made of 

 deal and kept well painted, begin to decay after ten years' hard 

 forcing ; yet it is but justice to state that I have seen others, 

 under very different circumstances, attain the patriarchal age of 

 four score ; but from calculations that I have carefully made 

 from the extensive and beautiful sets of iron lights at Syon, 

 compared with the wooden ones there and at other places, I am 

 convinced that at the end of twenty years iron quarry lights will 

 be found one half cheaper than wood ; and whilst the latter would 

 by that time get very tender over hard forcing, if not quite rotten, 

 the iron quarry well glazed and painted would be ready to go 

 down with the rising generation, sound and serviceable for cen- 

 turies to come; when they will shelter flowers of whose beauty 



