IMPROVEMENT OF CULINARY VEGETABLES. 
211 
rials which support and compose the bed in which the roots of the 
plants are placed. 
Such an apparatus can only be necessary and economical where much 
frame and pit forcing is carried on. One boiler of sufficient power in 
the centre of the range, with leading branches right and left, fitted 
with cocks and subdivision branches for the various products required, 
might be easily arranged by a clever garden architect, by which a 
world of expense and labour would be saved. 
Whether such a scheme has yet been perfectly executed, we are not 
aware * ; but of its practicability we have not the slightest doubt; and 
we therefore particularly beg of our readers — gardeners as well as 
architects—to turn their thoughts to the subject: it is a branch of 
garden architecture which invites attention, and no doubt the ingenious 
Tredgold had such things in view when he penned the sentence which 
we have quoted at the beginning of this paper. 
The object of the gardener, the space required, the quantum of heat 
and moisture, the thickness of the plant-bed, and the means of cover¬ 
ing, when necessary, and for admitting fresh air, should all be first 
given; and then the bricklayer’s and carpenter’s work, with the neces¬ 
sary enginery, would be arranged by the architect in such a manner as 
would at all times render the fabric and machinery entirely under the 
command of the manager. 
ON THE CULTIVATION OF WATER CRESSES. 
BY Z.Y. 
The sanatory virtues ascribed to this vegetable have long made it va¬ 
lued as a salad plant. Being found wild in every streamlet in what is 
often called the old world, the necessity of cultivating it in England did 
not occur to any one, until a person residing near Rickmersworth, in 
Buckinghamshire (and who used to employ poor people to pick these 
cresses from the river Colne), could not at last supply the demand for 
the London market, more especially as he had no more right to the 
cresses in the river than any one else in the neighbourhood. But the 
idea *of their cultivation occurring to him, and having the offer of 
the tenancy of a large branch of the river which bounded his own 
* Mr. Stothert’s “ Description of various Modes of heating by Steam for horticultural 
Purposes extracted from the Transactions of the Horticultural Society of London in our 
preceding March number, relates only to the employment of steam; but it is probable 
that, when the scheme has been more considered, a better and more simple plan may be 
contrived. 
