454 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
September 15. 
would be, while, at the same time, there might be Cucumbers 
at the contrary end throughout the winter; and should there 
be any fear of frost affecting the bedding plants, or whatever 
else might be there, the valves would only require to be 
i withdrawn, and there would be the preventive. 
But to return to other remarks in the plan (the section), 
in which is shown the chamber on each side of the passage, 
i and also the position of the piping therein, and the bed for 
; soil above. The side of the bed next to the outside wall is 
! formed by slates, set up edgewise, which are supported by 
! projecting bricks, left a foot apart in the outside wall, and 
thereby leaving a cavity between the bed and wall for the 
hot air to ascend into the house when required; but at 
the top of the cavity there is a narrow slip of board, hung 
with hinges, and opens as the lid of a box, so that by this 
means we can confine the hot air in the chamber, or admit 
j it into the house, which we find a great advantage ; for it is 
i evident, that in bright, sunny weather the interior of the 
i house would be better without artificial heat. And, as 
another advantage, when the chamber is confined, it re¬ 
quires very little fuel indeed to produce sufficient bottom- 
heat; for when the pipes are once heated, and so confined, 
they retain the heat a long time. The walls beside the 
passage have also projecting bricks to support the slates 
which form the bottom of the bed ; and in the same course 
of bricks there are others left out for the hot air to enter 
the house when required. But these are all under control, 
as well as the cavity, though on a different principle. They 
are regulated by sliding shutters, which cover or uncover 
half the length of the house at once. The ventilators, as 
shown in the outside wall, are exactly on the same principle. 
Those immediately under the wall-plate are intended to 
carry off any damp that might lodge about the stems of the 
Melons, and also to cause a more active circulation of air 
when the fruit is ripening, and in case of bedding plants 
being deposited there in autumn or winter. The bottom 
ventilators communicate with the heat chamber, which, of 
course, warms the air as it passes through into the house, 
so that air may be safely admitted there at any time. The 
plan of admitting air at the top is shown in the section, 
which is nothing else but two narrow boards hung by hinges 
to the ridge-piece, and are set open by irons attached to 
them, and which hang just within reach up the passage. 
They have in each four holes, an inch apart, which 
admit of an iron pin that is screwed horizontally to the 
underside of the ridge-piece, so that, by lifting up the 
shutter by the iron handle, and at the same time pushing it 
on to the horizontal pin, you may expose a space for the 
admission of air, from one to six inches, at the toil of five 
lights, which is half the length of the house ; and the same 
may be given on one side of the ridge-piece or the other, as the 
lights are all six inches shorter than the rafters. The rain 
is prevented from entering the house at the ridge by two 
grooves in the ridge-pin, which is cut through at every 
rafter, and conveys what few drops enter down to the wall- 
plate, and from thence is carried with the surface water to a 
cistern at the north end, which supplies the boiler through 
the wall. Upon the whole, nothing can be more simple, or 
more compact. 
I may add, lastly, that as an experiment, we placed about 
six inches thick of broken stone at the bottom of one bed, 
and the other we filled entirely with soil, and tve have not 
been able to perceive any difference, either in the growth of 
the plants, or crop of fruit, as they seem all good, and few 
plants present a more pleasing effect than a good crop of 
Cucumbers and Melons dangling from the roof of a house. 
—J. Thorougood, Latham House , Ormskirk. 
\Ye have numerous accounts on record of seeds having 
vegetated after long periods of rest, away from atmos¬ 
pheric changes, after being boiled for different lengths 
of time, and after resisting the pestilential influence of 
sewer and soil-drains for many years. Plants have been 
raised from seeds which ripened in the herbarium of the 
botanist, and remained there for a life-time ; and there 
is hardly any other way of transmitting the seeds of 
Ferns from one country to another than that of cutting 
off specimens, or pieces of the Fern-leaves, before the 
seeds are quite ripe, to dry them, and then pack them 
where no moisture will reach them, and they are safe 
for many years, the dust-like seeds of Ferns being even 
more tenacious of life than the larger kinds of seeds; 
but to retain its power, it must be in the seed-vessels, 
and on the leaf which bore them, and the leaf must be 
gathered and dried like hay, before the seed-vessels are 
ripe enough to open and discharge the seeds. 
In the same way, and under similar circumstances, 
we havo presumptive evidence that pollen may be 
gathered, and harvested so as to retain its subtle power 
of impregnation for any definite period, or, at least, as 
long as Fern-seeds retain their powers to vegetate. This 
is a new field of inquiry into which we would lead the 
young gardener and the amateur. 
The improvement of races of plants is not destined to 
stand still more than oLher improvements, and nothing 
would tend more to the speedy termination of an ex¬ 
periment than that we had control over the supply of 
pollen, so that we might use it when and where it was 
most convenient to ourselves. The power which we 
now acknowledge in conducting experiments, extends 
no further than getting the two parents into flower at 
the same time, or within short periods of each other. 
In anything beyond that, we are, at present, powerless; 
but we see no just reason why we should be so confined 
with pollen more than with Fern-seeds; preserve them, 
or say, at once harvest them, exactly on the same 
principle, and the one will keep just as long as the 
other. Mr. Beaton once said, many years since, that 
he believed pollen of Rhododendrons might be gathered 
on the Alps of Tibet, and sent over to fertilize our best 
seedlings here. After hearing all that could be said for, 
or against, this view of the subject, he remains still just 
of the very same opinion. We have had reports of 
failures in trying to keep or harvest pollen from 
Australia, India, North America, and from many people 
in this country, but from none of them have we heard 
one word about the process of ripening and drying 
pollen; therefore, we shall assume that no one has yet 
mastered the seeming difficulty of harvesting pollen for 
future use, and that the failures recorded were not due 
to the impracticability of the thing, but rather to the 
want of a knowledge of how pollen ought to be harvested, 
and that want is what we now propose to supply. 
Pollen, fifty years old, in a herbarium, was found, under 
the microscope, to yield to moisture exactly as fresh- 
gathered pollen would do—the little bags distending till 
they burst; the matter discharged differed in no way 
from that from a recent anther. The seeds ot Ferns 
have been brushed off from a specimen dried lor, and 
kept in, the herbarium for more than fifty years, and 
produced plants. Who can describe the diflerence in 
size and weight between a pollen-grain and a Fern-seed ; 
