204 
IRON PIPES, AND IRON GENERALLY. 
and except just at the Avail, where a few to- 
niatas, or chilies, or capsicums may be grown, 
nothing should be allowed to deprive the vine 
roots of heat, moisture, or air. The digging 
of a border for a crop always damages the 
upper roots of the vine, and these should never 
be disturbed on any account. 
All Grafted Trees require to be examined, 
all growths of the stock removed ; the clay, if 
cracked or fallen off, should be replaced with 
new, unless the union is complete, in which 
case it may be left. If the bast matting has 
rotted or broken, it may be as well to tie a 
fresh one over the place, if it be desirable. 
Stocks thtit have been bedded must be exam- 
ined for the same purpose, the removal of all 
shoots and branches that may be growing from 
the stock itself, to throw the entire strength 
into the tud. 
Strawberries must be watered freely in 
dry weather, not by half quantities and fre- 
quent, but by a good soaking all over the 
ground once in three or four days; hoeing 
between to loosen the ground a little, and 
strewing with clean straw between the rows 
thick enough to prevent evaporation. It is 
much cleaner than stable litter, and it is a 
mistaken notion that dung is so essential to 
the growth of strawberries, or that they are 
improved much by rich ground. If you want 
to increase any strawberries as much as pos- 
sible, pick off the bloom and lay the runners 
regularly down on the ground, that they may 
strike ; the straw is not wanted to them. If, 
on the contrary, you want the fruit, take off 
the runners, and have the straw. There will, 
for ordinary purposes, generally be as many 
and as strong runners as are wanted, and, that 
will grow their chief strength after the fruit 
is off. 
Examine Gooseberries and Currants, to 
see for grubs, and if there be any, have the ordi- 
nary means of extirpation, syringing, lighting 
wood fires, and burning rubbish on the wind- 
ward side, so that the smoke may blow all 
among them, and setting children to pick them 
off in the event of there being any difficulty 
about the other means. Always after any of 
these operations the ground bhould be raked 
underneath them, and the grubs that have 
fallen and been disturbed, picked up. 
Raspberries must also be picked over, and 
the stakes to which they are tied secured in 
the ground, and the fastenings all made good. 
IRON PIPES, AND IRON GENERALLY, IN 
HORTICULTURAL BUILDINGS. 
It has been the opinion of many practical 
men, that iron robs the air of its oxygen, and 
experience has shown us that many houses do 
not, from some cause or other, agree with 
some plants. Several causes, however, may 
be assigned; but I may say one thing, I never 
yet saw an iron built stove, nor a stove that 
depended for ail its heat on iron pipes, grow 
plants well. I consider that it may be from the 
fault above described. It may be that so much 
heated iron deprives the air of its oxygen, 
and thus spoils it for the healthy respiration 
of the plants. It is no use to say that there 
are hundreds of conservatories built of iron, 
and heated with iron pipes, where the plants 
do well, because conservatories have a con- 
stant supply of fresh air ; but the stove, which 
is closed for hours together, and has no fresh 
supply of air, is not in the same condition. 
The plan of the late Mr. Penn, of Greenwich, 
for admitting air, and keeping it in constant 
circulation, in a great measure prevented this 
mishief in iron houses ; but I must say, I 
should like to hear of some iron built house, 
heated with iron pipes to stove temperature 
always, in which plants did well long together. 
I know the evil is to be counteracted in some 
measure by watering the house and pipes, and 
generating steam ; I know there are many 
ways of counteracting the evil ; I know that 
Penn's system of heating and admitting air 
through a chamber of hot pipes, has a bene- 
ficial effect ; but I have never yet seen, from 
Ealing Park to Chatsworth, any one iron built 
house, heated as a stove with iron pipes, which 
did not make plants worse, rather than better, 
from the time they are placed in it. This 
may be a wrong notion, as applied to some 
things and some houses, but I shall be glad 
to learn, from any authenticated instances, that 
I am wrong. I know of many green-houses 
and conservatories, where plants grow beauti- 
fully, though everything but the glass is iron; 
but plants might as well be out in the open 
air, as in such houses, or in such houses as the 
open air, from the quantity always supplied. 
Again, I have noticed some of the best and 
most healthy plants that were ever exhibited 
grown in stoves with tan or bark pits, and a 
common flue to heat the house, and I think 
I could venture to say, that I will, in one of 
the old-fashioned stoves, built at half, or a third, 
the price of the modern toy houses, grow a 
plant with any one who shall possess all the 
fiddle fiddling apparatus and improvement 
(so called) of the most modern buildings. 
Some of the finest plants that ever graced 
the shows at Chiswick have been so grown, 
and in such houses. But the fact is, gar- 
deners who do this attend to their business ; 
they cannot leave the house for eight or ten 
hours together, and find their flues warm and 
comfortable afterwards, like iron pipes com- 
municating with a large boiler, so that in 
respect to trouble, the iron pipes and hot 
