214 



HEATING AS APPLIED IN HORTICULTURE. 



opinion of them given by Nicol, who had 

 experimented more than any man of his 

 day upon them, and declared them " to 

 be worse than useless." 



All stoves are, in their respective de- 

 grees, open to the fatal objection of heat- 

 ing to so high a temperature as to dete- 

 riorate the quality of the air passing 

 over them. " The temperature of boiling 

 water or steam is the highest degree to 

 which considerations of health and purity 

 of atmosphere should permit us to heat 

 the surfaces of air- warming apparatuses ; 

 but often as this has been impressed on 

 the public mind in multitudes of scienti- 

 fic works, and by numerous medical 

 authorities, — from the time when Tred- 

 gold wrote, nearly twenty years ago, to 

 this day, only one kind of stove has been 

 produced, in which a contrivance for 

 keeping the heat within this assigned 

 limit has been the leading feature ; which 

 contrivance, from its requiring some 

 nicety of adjustment, was soon aban- 

 doned by most of the manufacturers : the 

 consequence of which is, that nine-tenths 

 at least of the stoves now known and 

 used as ' Dr Arnott's stoves,' though they 

 retain the name of the philanthropic 

 projector, and something of the out- 

 ward form of his contrivance, have lost 

 every other distinctive feature of his in- 

 vention, and have no claim to any merits 

 beyond such as may be claimed by stoves 

 in general. In the work which Dr Arnott 

 published at the time when he produced 

 this stove, he insisted strongly on the 

 boiling point of water as the limit of its 

 temperature ; and he adopted means well 

 calculated to insure that limit not being 

 exceeded. But in few of the stoves now 

 imposed on the credulity of the public as 

 veritable ' Arnott's stoves,' are his self- 

 controlling regulators (whether the mer- 

 curial, or those acting by the expansion of 

 bars of metal) applied ; and therefore the 

 miscalled ' Arnott's stove ' of the present 

 day may be, and is, constantly worked at 

 as high a temperature as was used in most 

 of those cheap health-destroying contriv- 

 ances which it was his aim to subvert. 

 The impossibility of raising," by the true 

 Arnott's stove, " the temperature of steam 

 and hot-water apparatus many degrees 

 beyond the mild water-boiling limit of 

 212°, stamps those modes of superiority, 

 in a sanitary point of view, which few 



stoves can ever attain to." — Walker's 

 Useful Hints on Ventilation. 



Notwithstanding the soundness of the 

 above reasoning, and also of all that has 

 been said and written on the subject, still 

 some foolish people will persist in using 

 and recommending such stoves for the 

 purpose of heating plant-houses, than 

 which, scarcely a more unfitting mode 

 could be thought of. 



It would be vain to enumerate even 

 the names of half the manufacturers and 

 patentees of hot-air stoves, much less to 

 give the most condensed description of 

 their parts and powers. We consider the 

 man who admits one of them into his 

 dwelling as on the borders of insanity, 

 and running not only the risk of burning 

 his house about his ears, but of shorten- 

 ing the span of human existence to all 

 who dwell in it. If the archives of the 

 various fire insurance offices could be ex- 

 amined, they would present a fearful cata- 

 logue of burnings occasioned by the use 

 of hot-air stoves. Many of the finest 

 buildings in Britain, both public and pri- 

 vate, have fallen a prey to fire proved to 

 have been caused by their use. Again, 

 were hot-air stoves all that their advocates 

 have endeavoured to represent them, 

 there would not be a house in the king- 

 dom without one ; and long ere now they 

 would have been very generally intro- 

 duced into hothouses and conservatories. 

 Such, we know, is not the case ; and we 

 may safely answer the question Why 1 by 

 stating the positive fact — they have been 

 tried, and found wanting. And we will 

 go farther, and predict that, notwith- 

 standing the immense mass of learning 

 and argument lately brought forward in 

 favour of a stove of this kind, in a couple 

 of years it will be only talked of with all 

 the others that have gone before. 



The most popular of these stoves, so 

 far as hothouse-heating is concerned, are 

 Dr Arnott's, Chunk, Nott's, Vesta, White's, 

 Lawe's, Boyce's, Juck's, Forsyth's, Harper 

 and Joyce's, Deane's, Cundy's, Hazard's, 

 and the Polmaise. 



Of all these, when brought out, it was 

 predicted they would work wonders. They 

 are now, with the exception of Mr Rivers' 

 improved Arnott's, all but exploded ; and 

 perhaps before this page pass through 

 the press, that also may be numbered 

 with the rest. 



