PATENT PLANT CASE. 
Vide Designs, page 172. 
LETTERS PATENT to William Bull, F.L.S., F.R.H.S., of King’s 
Road, Chelsea, in the County of Middlesex, New Plant Merchant, 
for the Invention of *' An Improved Case for the Conveyance of 
Plants.” 
Sealed the 13th December, 1870, and dated the 27th June, 1870, 
SPECIFICATION in pursuance of the conditions of the Letters Patent, filed by the 
said William Bull in the Great Seal Patent Oflice on the 24th December, 1870. 
TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME, I, William Bull, F.L.S., 
F.R.H.S., of Bang’s Road, Chelsea, in the County of Middlesex, New Plant Merchant, 
send greeting. 
WHEREAS Her most Excellent Majesty Queen Victoria, by Her Letters Patent, 
bearing date the Twenty-seventh day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand 
eight hundred and seventy, in the thirty-fourth year of Her reign, did, for Herself, 
Her heirs and successors, give and grant unto me, the said William Bull, Her special 
licence that I, the said William Bull, my executors, administrators, and assigns, or 
such others as I, the said William Bull, my executors, administrators, and assigns, 
should at any time agree with, and no others, fi^om time to time and at all times 
thereafter during the term therein expressed, should and lawfully might make, use, 
exercise, and vend, within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the 
Channel Islands, and Isle of Man, an Invention for “An Improved Case for the Con- 
veyance of Plants,” upon the condition (amongst others) that I, the said William 
Bull, my executors or administrators, by an instrument in writing under my, or their, 
or one of their hands and seals, should particularly describe and ascertain the nature 
of the said Invention, and in what manner the same was to be performed, and cause 
the same to be filed in the Great Seal Patent Office within six calendar months next 
and immediately after the date of the said Letters Patent. 
NOW KNOW YE, that I, the said William Bull, do hereby declare the nature of 
the said Invention, and in what manner the same is to be performed, to be particularly 
described and ascertained in and by the following statement thereof, reference being 
had to the accompanying Sheet of Drawings, in which Pig. 1 is a perspective view of 
my improved case as seen when it is closed; Pig. 2, a corresponding view with one 
covering frame removed to show the interior of the case ; Pig. 3, an enlarged section 
of one of the upper ends of the case showing the ventilator ; and Pig. 4, a view of the 
inner side of the same at right angles to Pig. 3. 
It is well known that when plants have to be transported for long distances, and 
have consequently to remain packed for a considerable length of time, they require to 
be packed in cases with glass covers so that the requisite amount of light may be 
enabled to reach them. They also require to be more or less moist to withstand a 
journey of three or four months (more or less) in a closed case, and it is moreover 
necessary to protect them from the action of sea air and salt water during transit. 
Heretofore great loss has been sustained in the transmission of valuable plants 
owing to the direct action of the rays of the sun upon the glass covers of the cases 
