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THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, Novembeu 27, I860. 
The California Farmer states that the sales of fruit from the 
farm of G. G. Briggs, of Marysville, last year, “were greater 
than any gold mine in Carlifornia, amounting to over 100,000 
dollars.— {American Country Gentleman .) 
COHERING PLANT-HOUSES WITH TIFFANY. 
I hate for some time purposed mating a few remarks in your 
columns on tiffany-houses. When the idea first occurred to me 
of using such protection for fruit trees I wrote to you on the 
subject, as I had conceived the plan from some sketches and 
notices of Mr. Standish’s houses in your paper some time last 
March. I wrote to Mr. Rivers at the same time, and to the 
same effect, and he has taken up the plan with his usual enthu¬ 
siasm. Some numbers hack I noticed that you advised “ A 
Devonshire Rectob” to erect a permanent tiffany-liouse to 
protect his Currants, &c., from birds. On the strength of this, 
added to your favourable reception of my own suggestion before 
of growing fruit trees in tiffany instead of glass orchard-houses, 
I erected, as I had at first proposed to you, a lean-to structure 
of laths and Larch posts against a nine-foot wall ninety feet long, 
and made it with a door at either end, so as to have the tiffany 
on always like glass, with proper ventilation of course. 
I write this in the hope of saving others from incurring such 
expense and making such a blunder as I now hold I committed 
when I built my latli-liouse as a permanent affair. I am con¬ 
vinced now that no fruit trees grown under tiffany all the year 
round would be healthy, or ripen fruit with fine flavour. Mr. 
Rivers thinks the introduction of these structures valuable only 
as a protection against spring frosts. I am disposed to go 
further, and I hope I may he able to draw out the opinions of 
some competent judges on the point, as I have yet no experience 
to confirm or sanction my theoretical belief. 
I believe that if the north side of a tiffany-liouse be permanent, 
and the roof so contrived as to be capable of being propped up 
at such an angle as to admit the full blaze of the midsummer 
sun to every part of the said north side, that the heat will be 
much increased during the daytime, both by the rising hot air 
being checked, and also by the rays reflected on to the ground from 
the roof suspended above. There will be this further advantage, 
it seems to me—namely, that in autumn as soon as the nights 
became cool the roof might be let down for the night, and the 
sides added as well, and thus much heat prevented from escaping. 
With this view I would have the tiffany tacked to laths—say 
ten feet long, without, however, being severed between the 
contiguous laths—thus :— 
10 feet. 10 feet. 10 feet. 
This would enable the gardener to fold back the sides and roof 
to any extent, and fold it up all together and stow it away in 
the winter. If the top lath rested on pegs projecting from the 
ridge-board, the weight of the laths would keep the tiffany tight 
on the rafters running from the ridge to the eaves every five feet, 
and supported on plates resting on Larch poles. 
After the first week in June I should propose to fo'd the 
tiffany back, double or treble, as most convenient, and support 
it by rods toothed underneath, so that the roof could be lowered 
or raised by moving to a higher or lower notch. 
In my own case, the width of my border being twelve feet, 
and the roof thirteen feet from ridge to eave, I have another ! 
row of Larch pillars halfway between front and back, with a plate 
nailed along it supporting the rafters, which will make the bouse 
safe in case of a heavy fall of snow in March or April. The 
plates are five inches by three-quarters of an inch, set edgeways ; 
the rafters one inch and a half by three-quarters of an inch, also 
set edgeways. 
_ I do hope some experienced and unprejudiced gardener will 
give his opinion on the matter. 
I have been much pleased with Mr. Pearson’s paper on 
orchard-houses, and had I my orchard-house to build now I 
should follow his plan, and have a forty-feet-byRwenty-feet brick 
and glass house instead of a sixty-feet-by-fourteen-feet wood and 
glass. A frost on the night of the 12th of October last made my 
Vines and Fig trees look very foolish ; so much so, that I have 
resolved, as a choice of evils, to put some heating apparatus in 
the house, to make it safe against spring frosts and to ripen the 
wood earlier in the autumn. I purpose having a small furnace 
at the south end occupied by Figs, Black Hamburgh and Royal 
Muscadine Vines, with a flue of nine inches by seven inches, two 
bricks on edge, with slate top, running under the ladder-path 
down the centre, and iisuing in an iron pipe nine inches in 
diameter at the north end. My south end is glazed to the 
ground, with twenty inches by eighteen inches glass set edge to 
edge. Ought I to have lead put at the junction of the lower rows 
of frames to keep the frosts from the Figs ? This end of the 
house, I should add, is two feet above the soil, and has a door 
with two steps down. Again: Would the furnace-door be 
better inside the house or without? Lastly : Would it be a 
good thing or not to nail some hair felt along the woodwork 
below the shutters ? A space of two feet and a half in height, 
tongued, three-quarter boards painted stone colour. Above the 
shutters I have fifteen-incli panes to the eaves. If the felt would 
be an unnecessary expense, would it be of any use to let in some 
panes of glass here and there along the sides beneath the shutters, 
and just above the ground, as many of the trees should bear 
fruit nearer the ground than two feet six inches, though all 
single-stem trees and upright-trained Vines, no bushes ? 
I should not have asked so many questions, but I feel sure 
that your answers will be beneficial, not only to myself indi¬ 
vidually, but to other amateurs, of whom so many are now turn¬ 
ing their attention to the very interesting mode of growing fruit 
recommended by Mr. Rivers. 
Allow me in conclusion to thank you for the valuable paper 
on Peach training translated from the French, in your number 
of the 6tli inst. The method of pruning Peach trees is that 
which I have been following this year under Mr. Rivers’ 
directions, but quite blindly. I did as I was told, without the 
least understanding why, and latterly I have been in a state of 
complete despair, finding many shoots shrivelled up, as I now 
find from pinching too soon ; others continuing to push, push, 
push, till within this fortnight, owing, I suppose, to the tree 
being planted in the border, not in pots, and my being thus 
unable to starve them into ripeness by drought. The buds on 
my Peach trees are only just forming, and are not yet sufficiently 
developed to let me judge for certain which are bloom. I fear, 
however, that- they are mainly wood-buds. I lifted them all but 
a few about the 23rd of October, though the leaves had not 
fallen, in order to force them to rest. I can see no difference in 
those I left alone and those I transplanted. I have put a stove 
in, and the wood seems to be very slowly ripening. I suppose 
there is nothing more to be done? The trees seem none the 
worse for being moved before they had shed many leaves. They 
still bear leaves unflagging, and but few of the tender green 
shoots are flaccid, so that I trust I have not harmed the trees, as 
I feared I might. Peaches, however, next year I am not 
sanguine enough to expect, the wood being still so abominably 
unripe. The Plums and Apricots went to rest betimes, and 
are looking well. The lower buds of spurs formed this year by 
pinching Plums and Apricots are bloom-buds, I presume. 
Can this year’s wood, which has sent out further shoots and 
had them twice stopped, have blossom-buds on it now ? If the 
third joint, can the second also ? The last-pinched shoot, of 
course, can only contain wood-buds. 
Most of my Pear trees pushed the terminal buds after being 
cut back in August, instead of resting as they wnuld have done 
in a drier year. Of course they cannot ripen even the little bit I 
have not pinched off these second growths. Should I now cut 
back to the next unpushed bud, or leave them to take their 
chance? I hope my extreme ignorance may elicit information 
useful to others.— Ignoramus. 
[We have little faith in rearing up the tiffany at any angle 
with the back wall in summer, as on hot days the wall will be 
hot enough without it, and on sunless days such as we have had 
this season, it would do little to prevent the wall cooling, and in 
a hurricane of wind from the south we should expect to find a 
part of it a mile from the place. However, w# do believe that 
you could forward the fruit if such a cover was brought down 
over your poles as soon as the sun left the wall in the afternoon 
in summer ; and as a protection from frost it would, no doubt, be 
invaluable, and, if easily moved, all the better. There is no 
doubt the flue will be a great security both against frost and in 
ripening the wood and the fruit; but do not cover it with slates, 
these arc so apt to crack with heat. Better use tiles. It would 
