273 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, February 5, 1861. 
the pathway, from which a connection would be formed to each 
separate house—one house being heated to suit Peaches, another 
Vines, another Pines, or other tropical plants. Fig. 25 will 
give an idea of such a plan. A, the pathway ; b, border for w all 
plants in verandah; C, shelves ; D, ground level. The mains 
underneath the pathway are connected with the heating-pipes in 
paeh house at any leyel ipost desirable, 
the back. By this means, the outside walls being secured, one 
wall serves two houses, and one spouting each instead of two. 
Mr. Ferguson, of Stowe, has designed houses for the million on 
this plan : I am not sure whether they are yet published. Fig. 26, 
however, will give an idea of our meaning—say the houses are 
12 feet to the ridge and 20 feet wide, and all connected at the 
back with a glass-roofed verandah, beneath the floor of wflieh 
Fig. 25. 
Fjg. 26. 
(To be continued.') R* Fish, 
HOUSE FOR WINTERING GERANIUMS, &c. 
£. n;-ur/iP£"- *•- 
A cheaper and also an elegant mode for such a range of span- 
roofed houses would be to join such houses together, as was 
mentioned in The Cottage Gardener as done by Mr. Lane, 
and then be connected together by an arcade or verandah at 
the main flow and return pipes are placed. Each house may 
then be supplied with top heat or bottom heat at will, provided 
both systems of pipes are higher than the main flow and return 
For saving in everything except the glass roofs no plan could be 
more economical, and, connected with a covered arcade, few 
plans could be more pleasing. The only place in which T have 
seen span-houses thus connected together at back was at Lord 
Panmure’s, near Carnoustie, as designed and executed by Mr. 
Charles McIntosh, a notice of wlrch appeared in a previous 
volume of The Cottage Gardener. 
Would a small greenhouse, 8 feet by 5 feet 6 inches, north 
aspect, back and one end walls of houses, no sun summer or 
winter, but plenty of light, do for keeping Geraniums, Verbenas, 
Fuchsias, &c., through the winter without heat ? and if so, are 
there any plants that would blossom in summer without sun or 
artificial heat ? Secondly, If I must have heat what would be 
the most economical method ? and are there any plants to bloom 
in it in summer without sun but with heat, as I should like to 
see the house a little lively when my bedding plants are out, as 
it is in sight of my living-room ? The only time I have to attend 
to it is after six in the evening, and my means are very limited. 
I shall be my own mason, carpenter, glazier, and painter through 
necessity. I wa3 always fond of flowers ; but my pleasure in my 
bit of town garden has been doubled, and my slight knowledge 
increased, by the perusal of some eighteen or nineteen Numbers 
of The Cottage Gardener I had lent me—a book I would 
take in if I could afford it. I see in some of the Numbers com¬ 
plaints of the gas smutting the boilers. This is easily obviated 
by having a cylinder of any thin metal, the diameter about 1^ 
inch or 2 inches larger than the ring of jets or burner, and about 
I 6 or 7 inches long ; a piece of fine fly-wire (gauze is too fine), 
placed over the top end, and the gas turned on under and lit on 
the top of the wire, will produce double the heat from the same 
quantity of gas, and no smut at all or soil of any kind. The 
cylinder is put on just in the same way as a globe over the 
common burners, 
I have a beautiful lot of Tom Thumbs, potted m September, 
doing well until the last fortnight, since when I have lost three 
dozen cuttings and four large old plants. The stems are seized 
with what I should call the black rot, which quickly goes down 
to the root. I have cut off two more of the large plants as soon 
as I saw it, which appears to have stopped it. W. Mttnro. 
[We hardly understand your circumstances. Writing so far 
on in January, we should think that the question was hardly 
necessary if you could keep Geraniums, &c., in such a house 
all winter. The frost must have been very mild if you kept 
such things alive without any heat. If your large Geraniums 
were kept there w r e should think that frost had something to do 
with their loss. In such a house in summer you could keep such 
plants in bloom for a long time without any heat except what the 
season Rave, but you could not grow them well there they would 
be apt to become lanky. You do not say that you have any 
other place for growing. The simplest mode of heating would 
be by the gas system you mention under a small boiler; or, 
