T H E 
HORTICULTURAL REGISTER. 
September \st, 1831. 
PART L-HORTICULTURE, &c. 
()IUGINAL COMMUNICATIONS. 
Article I .—Some Comparative Remai'ks on Wood and 
Metal Hot-house Roofs. By Joseph Thompson, Sen. 
C.M.H.S. Gardener to His Grace the Duke of Portland, 
Welbeck, Notts. 
Gentlemen, 
I see in your Prospectus, and what is now published in the 
Horticultural Register, that you intend to give plans for Hot-houses, 
with such information thereon, as will be useful in the erection thereof. 
The minutiee of such work is very much wanted by young gardeners and 
others. 
Agreeable to your request and my promise, I now send you some 
comparative remarks on Metallic Roofs and Sashes, and those of Wood. 
We read, in that useful work “T/ie Giirdener's Magazine^ some con- 
Hicting observations on the merits and demerits of metal structures, for 
Horticultural purposes; it having fallen to my lot to have had not only 
the erecting, but the planting and attending various kinds of hot-houses, 
for more than 45 years, I beg to offer a little practical advice on this 
subject. 
Soon after I came to this place, (1801) the metallic mania broke out 
and spread rapidly, and my worthy friend, Mr. Walter Nichol, (not the 
author of that name, but his nephew) then gardener at Shipley Hall, 
caught the metallic fever, and he being a man justly noted for his pro¬ 
fessional talents, smittled many gentlemen and gardeners who took his 
advice in erecting hot-houses, some of which I went a considerable dis- 
V. tance to see, and was struck with the incongruity of compound sashes, 
with wood mortices and metal tenons. In 1804 Mr. Nichol and the 
patentee called upon me with j)atterns of sash-bars, a printed list of 
VoL. l. No. 3 o 
