August 14. 
COUNTRY GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION. 
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completion, desires, for the sake of his other duties, to 
be relieved from the further exercise of an active 
superintendence, but will continue to give the company 
the benefit of his counsel and experience. Mr. Laiug, 
the chairman, retires, and there are likewise vacancies 
in the direction, occasioned by the resignation of 
Messrs. Fuller, Calvert, and Lushington. “As regards 
the future, it is evident that the prospects of commercial 
success depend entirely on the number of Visitors who 
in the average of a series of years may be attracted to 
the Palace. Of this, the experience of the present year- 
will afford the best test, as the attraction of novelty is 
now over, and considering the circumstances of the 
times,—the war, the scarceness of provisions, and above 
all, the insufficiency of the present means of conveyance 
to the Palace,—this experience appears to the Directors 
to be very satisfactory.” 
HEATING PITS.—MELON-GROWING, &c. 
“ I have a pit, sixteen feet by eight feet, divided by a 
brick wall into equal compartments. I bad a flue at the 
bottom, which has not been used, as I now have a green¬ 
house, and it is out of order. The pit is two feet in the j 
ground, and one-and-a-lialf feet above it in front, and higher 
behind. There is no way of giving heat from the outside. 
I want to grow Melons in it in summer, commencing in 
March ; and to keep plants, Geraniums, &c., in it in winter. 
I think of building a low house, twenty feet by twelve. The | 
side-walls two feet in the ground, and two feet above it. 
Descending by three steps, the walk would be along the 
centre seven feet high, with a slab on each side. I propose 
heating both buildings by hot-water pipes, from the same 
boiler, and shall thank you for advice how to proceed. 
Should there be a single pipe of three or four inches round 
the Melon pit ? if so, at what height ? Or would it be I 
better to have a pipe along the front, with the return- 
pipe lower, and how much lower ? Should I use tan, or 
leaves, or manure, or a mixture, for the Melons? and how 
much space should I leave for it ? Will a single pipe round 
the new house be sufficient ? or is it better to have a how 
and return pipe all along the front; or will it require a 
double pipe all round ? I wish to be able to keep Ferns ' 
and a few stove plants in it. How large a boiler is required? I 
How is the house to be ventilated? There were slid- 1 
ing lights in a similar one that I saw. I think you I 
prefer crown glass to common sheet. I think of carrying I 
the smoke along the front of my Vinery, which is very near, | 
to a chimney in the back wall, and thus supplying heat to 
the front, which is the only defect that I now find from the 
use of my Arnott stove.—A. L. M.” 
As already intimated, much of this case is met by an 
article the other week. I am inclined, however, to give 
it this prominence, to prevent the disappointments in 
Melon-growing that have taken place this and preceding j 
seasons, arising not from any want of cultural skill, but | 
from a deficiency of the means to answer an anticipated 
result. There are few things of which gardeners of any | 
eminence should be more careful than passing an 
opinion to amateurs, and the proprietors of smull gar¬ 
dens, as to the suitability of this and that mode to 
accomplish a wished-for effect. The more anxious the 
proprietors of such little Edens are, the more desirous 
are they to elicit an opinion from any gardener of note 
with whom they come in contact—that notability being 
not ucfrequently rather the result of fortuitous cir¬ 
cumstances, than of any decided superiority in profes¬ 
sional and general intelligence over those brothers of 
the craft who superintend smaller gardens. A simple 
Yes ! or No ! to a question propounded to some of our 
great gardeners, may carry discomfort and next to ruin 
into an humble gardener’s home; an answer which, in 
all likelihood, would have been the direct reverse, had 
the whole of the facts of the case been submitted. They 
who are the most conversant with gardening and gar¬ 
deners, know thoroughly that first-rate men frequently 
hold small places, and there display great skill, though 
on a limited scale. It was an axiom of the far seeing 
Loudon, that a small place, to be made the most of, 
required a first-rate gardener, as well as the garden of a 
nobleman; and that the degree of anxiety and labour 
were more than usually supposed equally balanced ; as, 
in the one case, the gardener must exert himself with | 
head and hands; while in the other, the mental euer- j 
gies would be those chiefly brought into exercise. 
These matters have been suggested, because I have j 
known of several cases, within a few years, in which 
gardeners in places, not large, who had been extra suc¬ 
cessful with Melons, and early ones too, grown on the 
old dung-bed system, have next to totally failed with such 
a pit as that suggested by our correspondent, where the 
bottom-heat was inadequate, and the atmospheric heat 
the only temperature under command; their employers 
contending that atmospheric heat was quite sufficient 
for the growth and ripening of Melons; and because Mr. 
A. ripened Melons grown in pots, set upon a stage; that 
therefore there was no difference between Melons ripened 
in July and August, and those ripened in May; and no 
difference in temperature in a bed, with hot-water pipes 
above the level of the soil, and in pots, subjected to the 
atmospheric temperature of the house. 
HEATING PITS. 
In this, as well as many similar letters, there is a 
striking deficiency, which a few lines, to mark the re¬ 
lative position of the houses and pits, would have at 
once supplied. The propriety of heating the pit, the 
proposed low house, and carrying the flue through the 
front of the vinery near at hand, will depend upon the 
relative position of the houses, and the place where the 
stock-hole is to be placed; but if these are all right, there 
will be no difficulty in the matter whatever. 
This may be done in two ways, keeping in mind that 
the lowest part of any pipe must be higher than the 
top of the boiler, and that for the size of such houses, a 
medium-sized boiler will be more than large enough. 
Supposing that the new house intended for stove plants 
and Ferns is to be most generally heated, the Melon- 
pit might be heated from that by means of pipes and 
stop cocks. It will be advisable, in this case, that the 
pipes in the house, and those in the pit, should bo 
similar as respects that level. It will be seen, by-and- 
by, that I should recommend a pipe for bottom-heat in 
the Melon part, but the pipe for top-heat there might be 
on the same level as for bottom-heat, but not covered 
over, or all the pipes may be below the bed, with a 
rough chamber of clinkers and brickbats between the 
pipes and the soil, aud openings, by means of round 
| drain-tiles, or something of that kind, set upright, so as 
| alike to admit heat into the atmosphere of the house at 
will, and also permitting of the pouring down of water, 
j to give a moist heat, and thus secure moisture, in a state 
of vapour, to the roots of the Melons, when it would be 
much against their flavour to pour water on the surface 
of the soil. 
The second mode is what I would prefer, namely: 
taking the flow-pipe into a small elevated cistern, and 
from thence taking a pipe to heat each department. It 
matters but little, then, what may be the elevation of 
j the pipes in the various departments, provided the 
highest point of the highest of them is a foot or two 
below the level of the cistern, aud the lowest point of 
the lowest pipe is higher than the top of the boiler. If 
bottom-heat, therefore, is wanted at a considerable 
depth, the boiler must just be sunk in proportion. The 
only difficulty in this, as suggested some time ago, is, 
that sinking deep in many districts involves some out¬ 
lay for keeping the stock-hole and the furnace dry in all 
weathers, by means of drainage. 
