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A FEW OBSEEVATIONS ON HEATING 

 BY HOT WATER. 



This being a subject that is very intimately connected with 

 the cultivation and forcing of fruits under glass, it has been 

 considered advisable to append a few observations on the 

 principles of heating by hot water ; for, notwithstanding all 

 the elaborate essays that have from time to time appeared in 

 the horticultural press on heating hothouses with hot water — 

 not to say anything of the stirring controversies that have 

 taken place on the subject — I have the best reasons for be- 

 lieving that many whom the matter intimately concerns have 

 still but very vague and erroneous ideas regarding the prin- 

 ciples upon which the proper adjustment of hot-water boilers 

 and pipes depend. And from some cause or other, it is a 

 notion very prevalent that the easiest and shortest way to 

 get deeply immersed in the disagreeable and undefined diffi- 

 culty figuratively termed " hot water," is to plunge into this 

 heating question, in which are involved furnaces, boilers, 

 pipes, fire, and water, beside tl^at unfortunate being who has 

 to control the elements and conditions of combustion so as to 

 have half-a-dozen thermometer-needles in as many hothouses 

 standing at certain hair-like marks at half-a-dozen different 

 times in the four-and-twenty hours. 



It is my belief that, if those who have to do with fixing 

 pipes and boilers were to make themselves acquainted with 



