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LXXXII. Observations on Mr. Brown's Account of his 

 Steaming Apparatus, with some Suggestions for the Im- 

 provement thereof By Thomas Andrew Knight, Esq. 

 F. R. S. $c. President 



Read May 6, 1817. 



1 he defect of the plan above described, and of every 

 other which I have seen, for warming forcing-houses with 

 steam, is, that if, owing to any cause, the fire become in- 

 sufficient to keep the water in the boiler in a boiling state, 

 the current of steam ceases, and the pipes very soon neces- 

 sarily cease to give heat to the house. I beg, therefore, to 

 submit to the consideration of the Horticultural Society 

 the expediency of enlarging the diameter of the tube from 

 four to six inches, so constructed, and placed horizontally, 

 that it may always be half full of boiling water, which, in the 

 event of the current of steam failing, would communicate 

 heat to the house, during several hours. The annexed sketch 

 will convey my ideas upon the subject much better than any 

 language I can employ. 



If a large part of the boiling water in the boiler could be 

 driven up into the tube, and made to pass round the house, 

 this would act much more powerfully than the steam only, 

 and I conceive that it might be so raised, and conveyed very 

 easily, by the pressure of the steam in the boiler, according 

 to the plan described in Fig. 2. In this a pipe is proposed 

 to be fixed at the passage H (Fig. 2), and made to descend 



