April 6. 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
not sucli a stove be best, as the water-trough above could 
be tilled, or not, as required, without injuring the stove ? 
My only fear is the difliculty of getting rid of the clinkers, 
as I should use small coal and cinders; coke I find best, but 
would be expensive. A small copper boiler to work sepa¬ 
rately, with pipes or tank, would, I fear, be a bungling way. 
Have you any experience as to how it would answer to 
cement together strong three or four-inch draining pipes, 
with well-made collars, and place a flow and return down 
the 30 ft. house, and let the pipes run under the bed, with 
zinc troughs above, to give off moisture, and lattice to sup¬ 
port pots in greenhouse? Should you advise a brick 
Arnott stove, with trough above? Would a 2 ft. -1 in. square 
trough be sufficient, and 3 ft. fiin. high, to till from inside 
the house, and a pipe at the side, will allow water to run to 
waste outside the house when tilled sufficiently full, instead 
of running over on the stove ? I hope to see Mr. Rivers’s 
house in June, but before then should like to rebuild my 
stove ready for late Melons. 1 wish your correspondent, 
Mr. Craddock, could have favoured the advocates for Pol- 
maise with some calculation as to the quantity of fuel re¬ 
quired (l'olmaise versus Hot-Water) per week. Certainly, 
in building a Polniaise stove complete would be far less 
than boiler and pipes, or a tank. I wish Mr. Goliglitly 
could see a drawing of Mr. Craddock’s stove, with cold air 
drains, Ac., he might then draw in his strong objections; 
and also your friend, Mr. Robson, who are both for hot- 
water, and nothing but hot-water. Have you any knowledge 
of a cylinder of iron, or fire clay, ever being put up as a 
heating apparatus; what size should it be, say, for a 30 ft. 
house by 13 ; and how constructed to allow cold air to pass 
through the cylinder, and then enter the house ? 
“ I have had, at least, a dozen Cucumber plants, three dif¬ 
ferent sorts, in flower the last fortnight, and growing strong, 
and looking well, but all male blossoms. I have taken 
them off daily. Is that correct? and should the tendrils be 
removed also ? My bottom-heat of mould, nine inches from 
tiles, is 80° ; house 00° at night, and near 70° day; will that 
do ? The Cucumbers have a much drier appearance than 
in a dung bed, and yet the rafters and tho plants on a high 
shelf show much moisture early in a morning. 
“ Will the Aloe and Cacti tribe do plunged in sand at 70°, 
and atmosphere o(f to 55° ? They were kept dry in green¬ 
house all the winter.”—G. B. C.” 
[A correspondent fully replied to by Mr. Fish will, in 
many respects, meet your case. We will glance at a few 
other particulars:—1. We have learned sufficiently to dis¬ 
trust our own wisdom—aye, and our own practice, too—to 
dogmatise as to the utility of any heating system. We would 
give Polmaise, and every other system, a fair hearing. We 
have tried it ns an auxiliary; have never worked it by itself; 
have seen failures; but make no doubt our worthy corres¬ 
pondent of the other week succeeds as he says, and we for 
one would be glad to learn the very minutiie of his system, 
the cost involved, &c., because, in this latter matter, when 
all things were considered, drains, &e., we never could see 
the wonderful saving. However, we are always willing to 
be convinced by undoubted facts, though these tell against 
any belief or theory of our own. 2. We have only a faint 
idea how your furnace works in heating the two divisions of 
a hothouse and greenhouse; we cannot, therefore, decide 
whether it is large enough or not. 3. As you have*the 
copper boiler, we recommend you to use it, and you would 
see that by stop-cocks, whether using tank or pipes, you 
could easily heat the whole, having one part warm and 
another cool, as you liked. With a tank of moderate size, 
or pipes in proportion, you will have plenty of heat without 
boiling the water. 4. We have no experience of a brick 
Arnott’s stove for such purposes as growing Melons, &c. 
The pan above is a good idea; but our idea is, that all the 
pans you could raise above such a stove would not prevent 
your having a fruitful colony of red spiders. 5. Draining-tiles 
connected at the joints will do well, so long as no one 
stumbles against them, or the temperature of the water 
used in them is so moderate as not to expose them to great 
expansion and contraction. We have seen them rather 
I largely used, but true economy caused them at length to 
be given up. C. We have no knowledge of any cylinder for 
I heating such places that did not entail more disadvantages 
[ than advantages in its practical working. 7. You may 
13 
I remove the whole, or merely a part, of the male Cucumber 
| blossoms as they appear. If the plants are extra strong, 
we leave many, if weak, remove all the tendrils, their free pro¬ 
duction is a sign of vigour. 8. If there is, as you say, such a 
deposition of moisture on tho foliage in a morning, it shews 
that the house is not excessively dry. The generality of Aloi s 
and Cacti will do very well now, in a temperature of from 50° to j 
55°, without the privilege of being plunged in sand at 70°. ! 
They will grow all the better with this advantage; but if 
| not well sunned in autumn they may grow too well. 0. We j 
wish to make all such answers yenerally interesting, or, at 1 
least, readable. A little consideration on the part of corres- : 
pondents would enable us to perform this, if not with more 
efficiency, at least with more case. So many queries should 
not be jumbled together.] 
BARKERIA SPECTABILIS AND SKINNERI. 
“ I have a plant of Barkeria spcctabilis, which has 
hitherto been kept in the stove, but has not dowered ; and 
from what I have seen in your periodical, recommending a 
cool house for it, I have this day moved it into a low pit not 
heated; but the minimum temperature is 40°. I can keep 
tlile pit pretty damp. 1st. Am I right in this course ? 2nd. 
j Will the plant require as much moisture as when in the 
stove? Will the same treatment suit Barkeria Skinneri! 
\ My plant is on a bare block, with no moss. Would the latter 
be an acquisition ?—A Constant Reader and Subscriber.” 
( [No one in our pages ever advised placing the Barkeries 
i in a cold pit. Your’s will be too cold by many degrees. A 
greenhouse would be better, but an intermediate stove better 
still. The moist hot-air of the Orchid house, where Indian 
Orchids thrive, is too hot for the. Barkerias and other Guate- 
malian Orchids. The Barkerias do not require moss to 
their blocks ; but must be syringed frequently when growing. 
The pit would do in summer, but air must be given daily. 
In the culture of any plant, in any house, the principal 
point is constant attention. If the plants do not thrive, 
remove them into a warm house and give a more generous 
treatment. The Barkeria Skinneri requires the same treat¬ 
ment as the other.] 
AGRICULTURAL. 
SHROPSHIRE EWES. 
“ I want advice with respect to a flock of expensive 
Shropshire Ewes, some of which I purchased, at a high 
price, of the Earl of Aylesford, with a view to Tup breeding. 
My Ewes were never fed and housed so well as they have 
been this winter, and they were never in so bad a stale. 
They are lame, much troubled with ticks, and very thin. 
The Lambs are all small and weakly from the first, and they 
appear to get worse as they approach two or three weeks 
old. Many of them have sore mouths and noses, a sort of 
malignant eruption covers both. 
“ I must tell you the Ewes are all one, two, and three 
shear sheep ; that they have had corn, hay, and an abundance 
| of turnips and cabbages; and that they have been re- 
j gularly placed in a comfortable shed at night. As they 
| have lambed they have been removed, during the day, to a ! 
j piece of yellow turnips, the tops of which me two feet 
; high ; at night they are removed to another fold, and have 
as much hay as they like. I must remark, that mine is a 
high-lying, wet, clay farm, the herbage on which is of a j 
mossy, bad quality. The tillage is just what you would } 
expect it to be after forty years of the worst kind of mis- ! 
management. You will say—Why did I take such a farm ? 1 
I did not; -as Talpa says—it took me. I am making it l 
better. I have commenced a tile-yard, and for the next few i 
years I hope to bury all I can make. However, what I want I 
now, is to be told how to cure my Lambs of their sores, and 
how I am to improve the condition of my Ewes. This in¬ 
formation will be very useful to many fanners in this 
neighbourhood.— W. Lout, Tenbury." 
[Your Ewes are, no doubt, suffering, as you say, severely 
from the epidemic in its worst form, as evidenced by the 
sore mouths and noses both of the Ewes and Lambs; and I 
am inclined to think this has been aggravated, rather than 
: otherwise, by the housing in close fold at night, particularly 
