156 



ARTIFICIAL CLIMATES. 



and pipes will make it possible to supply water at 

 will to large crops of corn, oats, grass or wheat, 

 precisely as water is now supplied to gardens and 

 orchards. We may not look for this at once, yet 

 it is plain that it is coming, and to-day no com- 

 mercial market garden or florist's place can afford 

 to go without the best appliances for supplying 

 water to the out-door crops. There is rain enough 

 in the year. The point is to save January storm 

 water for use in August droughts. The business of 

 raising vegetables for city markets is simply a 

 manufacture, and some day it will be conducted on 

 manufacturing principles. This will mean abso- 

 lute independence of the rainfall, and a complete 

 control of all the water supplied to the crops. 



When we come to-the matter of sunshine and the 

 temperature it seems as if we were practically help- 

 less and at the mercy of the climate. We plant 

 our seed, and while we can supply water when 

 needed, we cannot cause the temperature to rise or 

 fall a single degree. This is not quite true, for the 

 moment we put a few heads of lettuce under a hot- 

 bed sash, we have placed them in a purely arti- 

 ficial climate, where we are very largely indepen- 

 dent of the heat of the sun, and need not care par- 

 ticularly for cold winds or warm. 



Glass we have had for a long time. Greenhouses 

 have been used for more than a hundred years, and 

 yet we are only beginning to understand how es- 

 sential glass is going to be to both the farmer and 

 gardener. We feed a cow for three objects : to keep 

 her warm, which means to keep her alive ; to cause 

 her to give milk in abundance, and to gain flesh. 

 The food is largely used by the animal to keep her 

 warm. If she stands in a cold, draughty barn and 

 is put out in a windy, open field on a cold day, just 

 so much more food must be consumed as fuel to 

 keep her warm, and just so much less goes to sup- 

 ply milk and flesh. The same cow in a glass-roofed 

 structure artificially warmed would chew her cud in 

 comfortable content, and devote the force obtained 

 from her breakfast to milk and fat. The idea of 

 forcing cows under glass may seem just a little 

 amusing at first glance, yet it is founded on both 

 science and common sense, and we shall live to see 

 it done. We already do it for poultry. Why not 

 for cattle ? The mere shelter of a glass roof ex- 

 posed to the sun will give a summer temperature to 

 any reasonably tight building whenever the sun 



shines. Cows under such a glass roof would simply 

 be in a summer temperature, and it would be diffi- 

 cult to prove that the cows would not enjoy it, and 

 enjoying June weather in January would respond in 

 more milk and more flesh. 



In the matter of plants it is evident that the use 

 of glass is to become of more and more value. We 

 sometimes think glass is only for the rich, who 

 want Black Hamburgs, or the florists who want 

 flowers out of season. The market gardener already 

 uses glass for his early crops, his lettuce and radish, 

 and to forward his young tomato plants. Glass 

 gives us complete control of a climate — not the 

 climate, but an artificial climate. By means of 

 steam and hot water we are enabled to convey the 

 heat of a fire to a distance. It becomes possible 

 with the aid of glass and our present systems of 

 heating to have the heat resulting from flame, with- 

 out the products of combustion that result from 

 flame. It would seem as if in the future the entire 

 business of raising plants would be in greater or 

 less degree controlled by the use of glass and heat. 

 May it not be possible to transform gardening from 

 a handicraft to a manufacture ? If capital can be 

 applied to use machinery in making shoes, why may 

 it not be employed to manufacture crops in artificial 

 climates, and very largely by the aid of machinery ? 

 A few years ago it was thought that only a hen 

 could brood over eggs. To-day we do all her work 

 in an incubator, which is practically by machinery. 

 Chickens are even fed by machinery — why not, 

 then, cabbages, beets or rhubarb ? We are too apt 

 to regard a plant as something too valuable to de- 

 stroy for its product. Floristfe have learned better. 

 Once they saved their rose vines year after year in 

 their greenhouses. To-day they force young plants 

 into flower, get a crop and throw them away. The 

 crop is the thing, and not the plant. 



These ideas are suggestions for the future. We 

 have yet to learn how much one acre will produce, 

 because we are subjects to the caprice of our cH- 

 mate. The gardening of the future will use arti- 

 ficial climates to produce crops far exceeding 

 anything we have yet seen. Gardeners will manu- 

 facture crops, and then, with capital combined with 

 machinery and science, we shall see the new gar- 

 dening that will produce vast quantities of food at 

 lower prices and a higher profit than now. 



Charles Barnard. 



