IMPORTANCE OF GLASS IN HORTICULTURE. 
without affecting it at all ; but I have since 
grown asparagus on ti still plainer system. I 
have dressed the ground all over in first-rate 
condition, and have got this in high order. 
About February or March, or even April, I 
draw drills, three feet apart, and sow the 
berries thinly along them, just covering them 
and no more. When they come up, I thin them, 
so as to leave the plants about eight or nine 
inches apart. Here they are allowed to grow to 
the third season, when, just before they comeup, 
I draw earth up so as to cover the crowns about 
two inches, and not more. I have the finest 
crops that can be wished, cutting them when 
about four inches above the ground, as before 
mentioned. I have had beds for years; and 
they seem inexhaustible. One year I have 
cabbages all through the winter, another 
brocoli : as soon as the cutting is over, a row 
of anything that will come off before the cut- 
ting time, is sure to do well. The dressing of 
the space between, scarcely a spit wide, is 
little trouble; and the ground being flat, there 
is every chance of both doing well. In a 
private establishment, where room is an object, 
and you want flavour and quantity instead of 
appearance, this plan is excellent; but I would 
not recommend it for people who want five 
or six inches of blanched, uneatable stuff for 
market, because I have found that the roots 
buried so deeply have rotted very frequently, 
and cannot be got at to cut at all. My plan 
will do well for those who eat asparagus at 
home, and are content to cut at the surface, 
and the advantage of so growing it will be 
found great. Z. 
IMPORTANCE OF GLASS IN HORTI- 
CULTURE. 
The application of glass to numerous pur- 
poses to which it has never been applied before, 
will ere long astound people who are not given 
to thinking; but one of the most common and 
popular uses will be that of superseding earth- 
enware in many cases, iron in some, and it 
would be no great stretch of imagination to 
fancy it will in some cases supersede slate. 
Hitherto the cost has shut it out from hundreds 
of useful purposes to which it might have been 
applied, while the restrictions put on its manu- 
facture by the necessary strict rules of the 
excise, was a bar to experiment and improve- 
ment. The duty was imposed by weight, the 
consequence of which was, that for all horti- 
cultural purposes glass was used too thin. The 
Hail Storm Insurance Society may now make 
up their accounts to insure the buildings only 
on the old scale, for hereafter but little glass 
will be used that will flinch at visitations of 
this kind. If a foot of glass weighed a pound, 
it paid a shilling duty, and this was respectable 
in thickness ; but lower that to twelve ounces 
to the foot, and it saved fourpenee per foot 
duty, and not more than three-halfpence of 
actual cost. We are speaking now at random 
as to exact figures, but they are near enough 
for all our present argument. Here then is, 
or rather was, a frightful tax upon utility, and 
a complete prohibition against using heavy 
glass for any purpose that could be accom- 
plished by ordinary means. It is quite certain 
that a glass roof would be as cheap as almost 
any other that could be made, and at the same 
time as strong ; and here we have at once one 
of the most cheering boons that could be given 
to the horticulturist. There will be no occa- 
sion now to be sparing of light. Glass, for 
ordinary purposes, may be the eighth of an 
inch thick, or even a quarter, without being 
so costly as the fragile stuff Ave have put up 
with for years. But we are not to confine our 
notions to the transparent material we are 
accustomed to contemplate, when we speak of 
glass. The use of glazed earthenware pipes 
at the nurseries on the Continent has been 
favourably noticed, and some of them have 
pipes on a very large scale, where they are 
found to answer every purpose of iron, and 
to be free from the objections to which that 
material is subject. Now, if earthenware pipes 
can be made to answer, a coarse kind of glass 
is infinitely stronger, and less liable to acci- 
dent. We have nothing to object to on the 
score of price ; for we can hardly conceive a 
material much cheaper, or so easily and plen- 
tifully supplied without aid from abroad. It 
has been said that iron in a heated state rapidly 
deprives the air of its oxygen, and this is held 
on the Continent to be highly injurious in close 
houses, while earthenware pipes have no such 
objection, and plants thrive in a marked degree 
wherever they are used. The objection, there- 
fore, to iron in the construction of houses, 
applies the more strongly in proportion to the 
extent of heating surface required, and the 
temperature kept up. Hence, from the con- 
stant supply of air in a green-house, which is 
open in all weathers but frost, and the small 
quantity of heated surface required, the mis- 
chief may not be perceptible ; but in a stove 
of high temperature, depending on heated iron 
pipes for its warmth, the objection would be 
greater. But whether this objection be tan- 
gible or not, glass would be much cheaper 
than iron; and the advocates of the tank system 
will be as much served as the advocates of 
pipes, because glass shall be pronounced, with- 
out any exception, the very best material for 
holding water. There is, however, one vast 
benefit that must arise from the diminished 
price of glass ; a house will not require the 
same degree of heating with thick glass that 
it does with thin glass; and we are not quite 
