lU.] 



AND GREEN-HOUSES. 



33 



at the front. These boards being well dove-tailed together at 

 the four corners, and being about two inches thick, form the frame. 

 Upon this fiame, glaze : sashes are put, which are called ligJitSf 

 and which rest upon the back and front and ends of the frame, and 

 also upon bars put across and fastened into the sides of the frame, 

 in such a way as to form resting-places for the sides of the lights. 

 This is quite enough of description ; because the carpenters know 

 how to make these things ; and all that I have to do in this place 

 is so to designate them that the reader may know what I am 

 talking about. 



49. Having the intention to make a hot-bed, you must first see 

 that you have a sufficiency of materials. You take the stable dung, 

 carry it into the hot-bed ground (letter d in the plan of the gar- 

 den), and there put it into a conical heap. If you have not enough 

 of dung from the stable-door, some from cow^-stalls, sheep-yards, 

 and even long stuff from pig-beds or pig-styes, half-stained litter ; 

 or anything of a grassy kind, and not entirely dry, will lend you 

 assistance ; but, let it be understood that the best of all possible 

 materials for the making of hot-beds is dung from the stable of 

 corn-fed horses ; and the next best comes from a sheep-yard, or 

 from stalls w here ewes and sucking lambs have been kept. Wheat- 

 straw^ is by far the best straw to have been used as litter, w'hen the 

 duns: is wanted for hot-beds. Bearino- in mind that this is the 

 best sort of materials, you must take what you have ; and, if it be 

 of an inferior quality, there must, at any rate, be a greater quan- 

 tity of it. Having collected your materials together in the hot-bed 

 ground, you next shake them up well together into a heap, in a 

 fiattish conical form. It is not sufficient merely to put the dung 

 up together in this form : it must be taken a prongful at a time, 

 and shaken entirely straw from straw , and mixed, long with short, 

 duly and truly through every part of the heap, from the bottom 

 to the top. When thus shaken up, the short stuff on the ground, 

 where the dung was tossed down out of the wheelbarrow, ought 

 to be shovelled up very clean, and flung over the heap. If the 

 dung be good, you will see it begin to smoke the next day. It 

 should lie only two days and a half, or three days, before it be 

 moved again. It should now be turned over very truly, well sha- 

 ken to pieces again, and another conical heap formed of it, care 

 being taken to put the outsides of the first heap towards the inside 

 of the second heap. In two or three days more, it \\\\\ have 



D 



