as applied to Plant Culture under Glass. 625 



at a very trifling expense, by having brick piers (not arches), on 

 which coarse slabs of wood or stone may be laid, and grouted 

 to a level with clay or lime mortar, and covered with a layer of 

 gravel. Your readers will be kind enough to forgive me for this 

 lengthened dissertation on the vine border, as 1 considered it in- 

 dispensable to strike at the root of the evil ; and surely I need not 

 say how much superior rich manured water, at a mild tempera- 

 ture, is for a vine border, compared with cold rain or melted 

 snow, nor how much warmer a vine border would be by having 

 only a tarpawling over it, to throw the rain off; dry earth being 

 such a powerful non-conductor of heat or cold, and, moreover, 

 such an excellent medium in which to preserve the young feeders 

 of the vine from rotting in winter. Now, let us consider the ex- 

 pense of covering a vine border with tarpawling, say 12 yards 

 long by 8 yards wide; that is, something less than 100 square 

 yards, which is only a small rick-cloth. Now, the rich farmer 

 that is too niggardly to provide himself with a rick-cloth is 

 justly considered undeserving of pity, in the event of loss from 

 rain on his haystack; how much more, then, are the rich and 

 noble amateurs of early grapes undeserving of sympathy, if they 

 fail to obtain handsome desserts, from a niggardly supply of the 

 necessary means. 



But, to return to the subject of heat and water ', if you 

 will bear with me a little, I will endeavour to explain the prac- 

 tical working of some of the various systems by which hot-houses 

 are heated ; and, in order that your readers may take some no- 

 tice of these practical hints, I must inform them that, for the 

 last thirteen years, a good deal of my living has depended upon 

 my conduct with the fire-shovel and lantern ; that is to say, I 

 have been more or less a stoker in various establishments during 

 that period. Now, the common fire-flue, of bricks and mortar, 

 is by no means so bad as many people imagine: it certainly 

 gives out a dry sulphureous heat, by no means congenial to vege- 

 tation, but (leaving out fermentation) no system that I am ac- 

 quainted with (except Kewley's open boiler, of which more by 

 and by) gives out moist heat. The sun heat is certainly dry, 

 and, were it not for the damp that it draws from all moist sub- 

 stances on which its rays fall, it would be as free of moisture 

 as the flame of a furnace ; yet every one knows that no heat for 

 a forcing-house equals the sunbeam. In getting a house heated, 

 therefore, all that I should desire of the builder would be, to se- 

 cure me a sufficiency of pure dry heat; and I should moisten it 

 to my own medium as circumstances might require. The con- 

 tinued vapour arising from water charged with mineral oxides, 

 as must be the case with open copper boilers full of water that 

 is continually circulating through rusty cast-iron pipes, or where 

 vapour is raised from water kept in the rusty panels of unpainted 

 Vol. XIV. — No. 105. ss 



