80 



JOURNAL OF HOETICULTUKE AND COTTAGE GARDENER, 



[ July 25, 1872. 



or it is saved from the very early and late bloomers. I have 

 heaps of spurious plants of Aquilegia glandulosa -which grow 

 tike weeds. — A. R, 



TRIAL OF BOILERS AT BIRMINGHAM. 

 We have been requested to publish the following corre- 

 spondence : — 



[first communication.] 



"Woolwich, S.E., 



" 18th July, 1872. 

 "Deae Sie, — I should be extremely obliged if you would 

 kindly say whether any heed or redress would be taken into 

 •consideration by the Local Committee of any injustice that any 

 of the boiler competitors have been subjected to. If so, I should 

 like to bring a few facts under their notice, as I feel certain that 

 thorough justice is anxiously desired by all concerned. 

 "Mr. B. A. Hallam, Sec." "Yours truly, H. Cannell. 



c [SECOND COMMUNICATION.] 



" Woolwich, S.E., 



" 19th July, 1872. 



" Sib, — The enclosed is a copy of letter just received from 

 Mr. Mee, which I beg, with this, you will lay before the Local 

 Committee ; and although he has a medal awarded him for 

 merits combined in my circulator, yet he is dissatisfied, and I 

 must beg of you as gentlemen to withhold this gold medal until 

 there has been a thorough investigation of the whole matter. 

 T, therefore, protest in the strongest possible terms against this 

 medal being awarded to Messrs. Hartley & Sugden. 



" Copies of enclosed and all other communications forwarded 

 to the Council of Royal Horticultural Society, and Editors of 

 the Gardeners' Chronicle, Journal of Horticulture, Gardener's 

 Magazine, and the Garden. — I am, sir, your obedient servant, 



" Mr. B. A. Hallam." " Heney Cannell. 



[From F. J. Mee, Horticultural Builder and Hot-water Engineer.] 

 " Smithdown Road, Liverpool, 



" To Mr. Cannell. " 18th July, 1872. 



" Deae Sie, — I daresay you have heard by this who has got 

 the gold medal, and will be able to judge for yourself if it has 

 Ibeen fairly awarded. I cannot possibly see what points Hartley 

 and Sugden have gained to entitle them to it, unless it is the 

 friendship of the principal Judge. They started, as you are 

 aware, on the 26th of June against Dennis for 500 feet, and it 

 was, as you remember, a dead failure. That ought to have 

 :settled them; but, no, they are allowed to bring forward their 

 brickwork 15 inches, to get new doors, new dead plates and 

 true frames from Mr. Hassall, the Judge, and allowed to go on 

 •again on the 3rd of July for 500 feet, until Mr. Harlow and 

 ■others complained against a boiler entered for 1000 feet being 

 allowed to compete for 500 feet; they then stopped, but were 

 allowed to go on again next morning for 1000 feet. I consider 

 it very unfair all throughout. You were not allowed to go on 

 .again, although you had such wretched days for your trials. 

 There is another thing, and that alone should have disqualified 

 them from starting at all. Their boiler, it appears, weighs 

 £ cwt. 3 qrs.; the cost of that class of boiler is &d. to 6ld. per 

 pound, independent of sockets or anything else; that would 

 •come to £29 — their price in the Show catalogue is £15 10s. I 

 Teceived a small pamphlet of rules and regulations before the 

 'Show, I daresay you got one. One rule says, ( Any exhibitor 

 entering an article for less than its value will not be allowed to 

 icompete for a prize.' That is clearly so in this case. I enclose 

 Email sketch of their boiler, so that you can get the price of it 

 if you tike. The measurements are correct. I took them when 

 the boiler was stripped. We ought all to raise a protest against 

 the award. "Yours truly (Signed), F. J. Mee." 



GARDEN STRUCTURES AND IMPLEMENTS 



_1T THE BOYAL HOETICULTUEAL SOCIETY'S BIEMINGHAH EXHIBITION. 



No. 2. 



Stand No. 42 contained chiefly weighing machines ; 43, sew- 

 ing machines, without much horticultural interest. In Stand 44 

 Mr, Ryland exhibited fuel-saving fire-baffB. They are econo- 

 mical certainly in point of weight, and for the generation 

 of steam in steam boilers, where the combustion of fuel has to 

 be maintained as perfectly as possible, would, no doubt, be very 

 useful, but we much question if there would be any advantage 

 in using them for horticultural boilers. 



In Stand No. 45 Mr. E. Housman, of Perry Hall, exhibited a 

 wrought-iron stove and fittings adapted to a brick Arnott's stove. 

 Mr. Housman objects to the use of hot- water apparatus, as he 

 thinks it an uneconomical way to heat one fluid as a means 

 of conveying heat to another, and that the simplest way is to 

 heat the air direct. No doubt this is true in theory, but not 

 very easy to carry out in practice. A flue which would give off 

 all the heat would, no doubt, be the most perfect form ; but flues 



are very cumbrous, and if put under ground very wasteful of 

 heat, and no Polmaise system, or any system of hot air, has yet 

 been invented in which all the heat is extracted from the fuel in 

 the stove, and given up to the air which surrounds the stove, 

 which air is to be conveyed through air flues to heat the conser- 

 vatory or other buildings to be heated. The chimney from all 

 stoves and hot-air apparatus must be economised as a flue, or 

 else all the heat in the chimney, which is invariably great, must 

 be wasted. As we have just before said, flues in conservatories 

 and stoves are just as unsightly and more unmanageable than 

 hot-water pipes. Hot-air stoves with flues made from 9-inch 

 fireclay pipes, are very good for churches, &c, but the kind of 

 heat given off is not good for plants. 



We may pass over Stands 45a, 46, 46a, 46b, 46c, 46d, 46e, as, 

 with the exception of vases and flower-pots in 46c, and dried 

 flowers in 46d, there was nothing of horticultural interest. 



Passing over the boilers we come to the horticultural struc- 

 tures, which were of great interest, especially to professional 

 gardeners and to gentlemen and amateurs wishing to erect houses. 

 There were about twenty of these houses shown by nine ex- 

 hibitors; Mr. Howitt, Stand No. 2, having been the fortunate 

 winner of the gold medal, and Mr. Cranston took the silver 

 medal for the most complete collection of horticultural buildings 

 adapted for general purposes. Mr. Howitt well deserved the gold 

 medal for the very excellent house exhibited, which was also 

 moderate in price. The especial principle of one of his houses 

 is, that the girders are formed of ribs of wrought-iron pipes 

 similar to 2-ineh gas pipes screwed into each other, and curved 

 to whatever shape of roof is required, from a semicircular to a 

 pointed arch. These semicircular or arched tubular ribs support 

 horizontal iron bearers which carry the sash-bars; the sash- 

 bars made either of light iron or wood, every pane of glass 

 separately framed and without laps, and condensed moisture 

 being discharged outside. Ventilation is effected by means of 

 small glass lights in the roof, opening either by rack and pinion, 

 or by lever. One error in the house erected at Birmingham, 

 which might be easily altered, was, that the upper lights, owing 

 to the position of the curve, could not be raised sufficiently 

 high without reversing the drip of the water, and the action 

 of the rack and pinion was too slow ; the wire rope which was 

 used to connect the lever with the pinion is also liable to stretch 

 and to vary too much with the temperature. The ventilation 

 at the bottom is by means of side lights opening and shutting 

 simultaneously by means of a lever-action on a wrought-iron 

 tubular rod. Any of these lights can be disconnected at plea- 

 sure. There was also a permanent ventilator in the roof by 

 means of a zinc tube carried above the house, with openings at 

 its sides, like a T-pipe. This is likely to be very useful in 

 stormy weather, when the upper ventilating-sashes had better 

 not be opened. 



Mr. Howitt's house was fitted-up with pipes with ventilating 

 and vaporising troughs, invented by Mr. Taylor, Walton Villa, 

 Aylesbury, Bucks. The system is to have troughs to contain 

 water over the ordinary hot-water pipes, cast on the pipes. This 

 is covered with a zinc cover, and a zinc pipe communicating 

 with the outer air is bent into the cover at one end, the farther 

 end of the cover being left open for the air to escape into the 

 house after passing over the length of heated water in the 

 evaporating-pan, from which it would receive both heat and 

 moisture. For forcing houses and stoves this method of venti- 

 lating and vaporising must be very beneficial, especially in 

 winter time. It would, be very valuable, too, in propagating-pits. 



We pass on next to stand No. 63, where one of Mr. Ayres's 

 patent imperishable hothouses is erected. This, no doubt, has 

 its advantages in point of durability, but we are afraid the cost 

 will deter many from putting them up. There are some very 

 good points about this house, especially the stages made of 

 hydraulic cement concrete, on which the pots are placed, having 

 evaporating troughs parallel to hold water, and holes pierced 

 through for the air to percolate. The shelves, too, which can 

 be screwed on to the T-shaped rafters and removed at pleasure, 

 are very useful adjuncts. The slope of the side is good. We 

 do not think sufficient precautions are taken against drip, and 

 the glass, which overlaps laterally instead of horizontally, was 

 lapped too widely. The top ventilator, too, was heavy and 

 worked with a system of chain and pullies, very liable to get 

 out of order, and the lower lights opening direct on the plants 

 were not in so good a position as if placed lower down, so as to 

 put the bottom air on direct upon the hot-water pipes. Indeed, 

 with the system of side ventilation by means of sashes (as a 

 general rule so commonly adopted), we may observe, that it 

 would be far better to have ventilation in the brickwork below the 

 level of the stages, and Mr. Looker's ventilating bricks which we 

 have already remarked on, will give builders a very simple and 

 efficient way of admitting air at the bottom of the house. Mr. 

 Ayres's expanding glass walls with glass copings on iron brackets, 

 and to which iron rafters could be fixed to expand the house to 

 any width required, seem to be a very efficient method of com- 

 bining fruit walls with fruit houses. These were erected along- 

 side the imperishable hothouse. There were small ventilators 



