22 



HOT WATER APPARATUS. 



Economy and simplicity in all improvements connected with domestic 

 or horticultm:al affairs ought to claim om* particular attention, and of all 

 the improvements of which late years have heen so productive, we know 

 none of greater importance than that of heating by means of hot water. 



" Neither the capahiUties,'' says Mr. Hood, in his excellent treatise, of 

 this method of warming, nor the various useful purposes to which it is 

 applicable, are at present fully appreciated. There are no buildings, how- 

 ever large, to which it cannot be advantageously adapted, nor any that 

 present insurmountable difficulties in its practical application. It is an in- 

 vention yet only in its infancy, but which gives promise of a maturity 

 that will confer the greatest advantages where its employment is the most 

 extensive." 



It appears, from undoubted authority, that the idea of heating by this 

 means was, to a certain extent, understood and applied in France, prior to 

 1777, by M. Bonnemain, a physician of some eminence, as appears from the 

 articles Assainissement, ChaleuVj Incubation, in the Dictionnaire Technolo- 

 gique. Bonnemain's attention seems to have been drawn to this mode of 

 attaining a steady and moderate degree of heat, with a view to apply it to 

 the process of hatching chickens, a profession he carried on very success- 

 fully for some years in the neighbourhood of Paris, and there is little doubt 

 but that he took the idea from an art long practised in Egypt of hatching 

 chickens in ovens built for that purpose. His mode of hatching chickens 

 by the aid of hot water is described in GiWs Technological Repository for 

 February, 1828. M. Chopineau is stated to have employed hot water for a 

 similar purpose, but at what period is not stated, either in the Nouveau 

 Cours Agriculture, or The Encyclopedic Methodique, in both of which 

 works his process is described. 



M. Bonnemain certainly applied hot water to the heating of stoves and 

 greenhouses ; but whether with complete success or not, we have no 

 positive record. In the year 1799, we learn from GilVs Technological Re- 

 pository, that Mr. R. Weston purposed to apply heat to stoves by this 

 means ; but it does not appear that any progress was made from his 

 suggestions. 



The Marquis de Chabannes, according to the preface to an edition of his 

 work, dated 1818, arrived in this country in the year 1787. In 181 4, he says 

 " the idea first struck him of constructing his caloriferae or hot air stove ; 

 and from what we can comprehend from his rambling and flighty work, it 



