208 
REMARKS ON STEAM AND HOT WATER. 
engineers are founded ; and they are more or less efficient according to 
the degree of heat required, to the quantity of fuel applied, or to the 
celerity by which the body of water is heated on applying fire. 
In all cold climates heat may truly be said to be a necessary of life; 
and the easiest, safest, and least expensive way of having a command of 
this, whether for personal comfort, for domestic or manufacturing pur¬ 
poses, or for preserving exotic plants and maturing their fruits, must 
be the most desirable. Stoves and smoke flues, however efficient they 
may be for many purposes of house and garden management, are 
always attended by a disagreeable, sulphurous smell, highly offensive 
in buildings erected for the preservation of sweet fruits and flowers. 
Then there are accumulations of soot,—flaws, which allow the escape of 
smoke, and always the risk, or at least the fear, of the flue bursting, or 
of the soot taking fire. Besides, smoke-flues require a large furnace, 
and much care is required in making up the fire for the night, lest it 
should burn too fiercely, or not at all. 
These being the defects of fire-flues, it is not at all to be wondered 
at that some other mode of imparting heat should be invented. The 
steam-engine had already been brought to great perfection as a motive 
power; and the high degree of heat evolved from steam, which at the 
same time was an elastic and transfusable fluid, readily suggested the 
idea of using steam in pipes, instead of smoke in brick flues. 
Before this time gardeners had observed, that plants forced in any 
way were greatly benefitted by being frequently steamed, and this 
was obtained by the simple process of pouring water on the hot flues. 
Hence arose a desire to have an apparatus attached to the furnace of 
the hot-house, and which might be used to supply hot steam whenever 
the manager thought it necessary. The scheme was first suggested, or at 
least first executed, by Gilbert Slater, Esq., of Low Layton, in Essex, 
(1791) who employed Mr. Slark, Ironmonger, of Cheapside, London, 
to erect a small boiler over the furnace of a small peach house. From 
the top of the boiler a tin pipe, about five inches diameter, was carried 
along close to the bottom of the back wall; and in this, at different dis¬ 
tances, were inserted branch pipes of smaller bore, and of different 
lengths, to equalise the distribution of the steam within the house. 
Although this apparatus answered the purpose for which it was 
erected, by keeping the trees perfectly healthy and free from insects, 
yet it must be evident to every engineer that such an apparatus must 
act imperfectly, owing to the thinness of the conveying pipes, through 
which the colder atmosphere of the house condensed the steam almost 
as fast as it entered them. But when the air of the house and the 
pipes themselves became sufficiently heated, the delivery of steam of 
