150 WATER FOR AQUATICS MUST BE WARMED. 



aquatics are cultivated should be also brought to a fitting heat. 

 Mr. William Kent succeeded well in making many tropical species 

 flower, by growing them in lead cisterns plunged in a tan-bed 

 {Hort. Trans., iii. 34) in a close heat. In like manner, Mr. 

 Christie Duff procured flowers in abundance from Nymphsea 

 rubra, cserulea, and odorata, by placing them in a cistern in a pine 

 stove upon the end flues, where the fire enters and escapes ; or 

 by plunging them into tan-beds in pine-houses, varying in 

 temperature from 80° to 100°. {Hort. Trans., vii. 386.) Very 

 lately, Mr. Sylvester, of Chorley, in Lancashire, obtained fine 

 flowers from Nelumbium luteum, by paying attention to the 

 temperature of the water. When he kept the latter at 85°, the 

 plants grew vigorously, and were in perfect health, but flowerless ; 

 but by lowering it to 70° — 75°, which more nearly approaches 

 the heat to which the plant is naturally accustomed, the mag- 

 nificent blossoms were produced and succeeded by seeds ; the 

 red Nelumbium, however, which inhabits countries with a 

 greater summer heat than the yellow, at the same time suffered 

 by this lowering of temperature, none of its blossom buds 

 having been able to unfold. {Bot. Mag., xiii., n. s. t. 3753.) 

 The water of rice fields, in which the red Nelumbium flourishes, 

 was seen by Meyen at 113° at Lantao, in China. 



The Victoria Lily affords another instance. It will grow while its 

 roots are in a temperature wholly insufficient to enable it to ilower. 

 And another water plant, the Aponogeton distachyum, iiowers abun- 

 dantly even in winter wherever the temperature of the pond in which it 

 grows rises sufficiently. 



Well-regulated bottom heat being thus shown to be of such immense 

 importance in gardening, it is surprising that more attention should not 

 be paid to economising the waste water of steam engines where factories 

 are conveniently situated. "What may be done, without cost, by atten- 

 tion to this, is shown by the following experiment tried by Mr. DOlwyn 

 Llewellyn, of Penllergare. From a small eight-inch cylinder engine, 

 employed by him for agricultural purposes, this gentleman conducted a 

 jet of steam for twenty minutes daily, through an inch iron pipe, into a 

 bed of rough stones, covered by a glazed frame. A journal of the tem- 

 perature was kept for eleven days, with the following result : — 



