THE HEATING OF HORTICULTURAL BUILDINGS. 
was wasted in Polmaise experiments, a much, more profitable and creditable end would ha\e been 
attained. Every-day 
experience proves to 
us that much of the 
best fruit, and many 
of the forced flowers 
and vegetables in 
Covent Garden and 
other markets, are 
produced by the com¬ 
mon flue, and that 
likewise in structures 
so rude and appa¬ 
rently unsuitable, 
that, but for the fact 
of the productions 
being before them, 
some of our philo¬ 
sophical brethren 
would say it would 
he impossible to grow 
them to such perfec¬ 
tion in such places ; 
and it must be con¬ 
fessed that the im¬ 
provement in the qua¬ 
lity of the fruit has not 
been at all commen¬ 
surate with the im¬ 
provement in the 
c onstruction and character of the erections in which it is produced. What have we gained by sheet- 
glass, and its supposed and theoretically-established superiority ? The large Pines at Gunnershury— 
the magnificent Grapes at Bishops’ Stortford—the immense Peaches of Burleigh and Currahmoor—all 
originated beneath common glass. Has hot water achieved any decided superiorities ? Speak, ye 
market-gardeners, whose early Grapes are celebrated for splendid 
colour, thinness of skin, and exquisite flavour; and possibly we 
shall find that neither construction, nor glass, nor hot water, nor 
superior acquirements, have attained any superior advantages, but 
that common plodding and ignorant men, in unfavourable situations 
with ordinary means, have produced, and continue to produce, fruit 
as good and flowers as sweet as those who have houses upon which 
expenditure was never more lavish, or situations better calculated 
to produce perfection; and it is doubtful whether Mr. Paxton’s 
Crystal Palace itself would produce finer plants than are daily seen 
in places of very minor and inferior pretensions. Thus do extremes 
meet; and thus do we see that persons of limited means, with a small 
outlay, hacked by good broad common sense, may have fruit and 
flowers as fine as the man who spends thousands in the formation of 
a garden, and hundreds annually in the maintenance of the same. NEW FLUE TILES - 
In Germany, and also in other parts of the Continent, the common flues are used in preference to 
hot-water pipes; indeed, with their intensely severe weather, unless an immense surface of pipe is used, 
it is found impossible to exclude the frost, and we believe it is no unusual occurrence to see these flues 
heated to red heat, and that for weeks together, without any material injury being done. It may be 
urged as an argument against the flues, that plants and fruits are not so well grown on the Continent as 
at home. This we grant; but at the same time we may state, that both plants and fruits are as well 
grown in this country by the common flue as by the best-constructed hot-water apparatus ; and it is 
not many years since Mr. S. Barnes, one of the best forcing gardeners in England, stated that he would 
rather have a good flue than a badly-constructed hot-water apparatus, and we doubt not almost every 
intelligent gardener in the country would say the same. Mr. Crawshay—than whom no person ever 
