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THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, November <>, 1S5S. 
to plant-houses; and even now, although I live in the 
midst of a large host of lawyers in Surbiton, I confess I 
should be puzzled to give advice which would keep a 
tenant, sure and certain, clear from the said law on the 
subject of garden fixtures. The law opinions which I can 
obtain here are as various as are the kinds of plants for a 
greenhouse. I can make nothing out of them. Hence it is 
that I broach the subject in these pages, and ask the advice 
of the editor and all the contributors, and any readers who 
may have known cases of dispute which have been legally 
decided. Opinions I do not 'Want,—I have as many ol 
them as would puzzle any lawyer,—I only want an answer 
to the question,—Ho you happen to know any cases of 
disputes about removing plant-houses, or vineries, between 
landlord and tenant, and how the law decided between 
them? Nothing more. I should like to hear all about 
the matter before the end of November, or at any rate 
before Christmas. 
The legal instruction which I received about the new 
hothouses, twenty years back, was to put in the founda¬ 
tions in brick, and to put boards, or planks, on the walls, 
just above the ground line, and to screw the framework 
of the houses to these plates, as we should call them. If 
any dispute arose, I was told, the landlord could claim no 
more than the brick foundations ; and, on that score, an 
orchard - house, built after Mr. Rivers’ plan, might be 
claimed, all but the roof; and a roof built that way is 
more tiresome to take down, at the end of the lease, than 
such a structure ns I would recommend to a moneyed man. 
I never wordd build the roof of any garden-house— 
except for permanency—on the principles of “ all rafters 
and no lights,” as my forcing foreman said, when he first 
read, “ The Orchard House,” by Mr. Rivers. Bound 
London, and all large towns and cities, there are hun¬ 
dreds who are “here to day and off to-morrow,” and 
who want to be able to pack up their greenhouses, orchard- 
houses, and other plant-houses, as easily as the rest of 
their furniture, or sell them at a great sacrifice. 
With my practical knowledge of these facts, I have 
another question to ask hothouse builders, and I name 
Messrs. Weeks, Grey, aud Ormson ;—I mean the three 
firms, as I know the principals personally, and because 
they advertise in The Cottage Gardener ;■ —but I do 
not confine the question to them, it is open to all. The 
question refers to an orchard-house, GO feet long and 20 
feet wide, a span-roof; walls and ends, up to 5 feet, to be 
bricks, or posts and boards, like Mr. Rivers’ first plan ; 
the two gables, or ends, to be glass ; and the roof to be 
in “ lights,” or sashes, like a common vinery. Can such 
a house be put up. without rafters , and without any posts, 
or props, to keep up the roof? The first temporary 
house of this kind, which I have seen, was a span-roofed 
one : it was the best part of 100 feet long, and 50 or 60 
feet wide, and covered with canvass, for a birthday-dinner, 
when the present Lord Lovet came of age, nearly forty 
years since. It was erected in the court before Beaufort 
Castle, and I helped to form the decorations with fiowci’s 
and evergreens. 
The construction was in this wise. A row of Fir-tree 
posts, with the bark on, 20 feet high and 10 feet apart, 
was planted down the centre of the court, aud a row on 
each side of the court, and across both ends, 10 or 12 feet 
high. The trees were taken up, as for transplanting, 
with their roots, and the only difference from planting 
was, that the roots w'ere sunk two feet in the ground. A 
“wall plate” was nailed on the top of the side and end 
posts all round, and a ridge piece, or plate, on the top of 
the centre posts; from, or rather on, these “ plates,” rafters 
were nailed, at short intervals; and the whole was covered 
with canvass, and lined inside with finer hangings. When 
the whole was finished, all the winds in the Crimea and 
Caucasus cottld not shake or move it one jot. The Messrs. 
Edgington, Rivers, and Weeks, coidd not make a stronger 
thing of it, with all their skill and great practical under¬ 
standing ; and if they attempted to drink bumper for 
bumper with the Highland chieflains inside, with the 
late Duke of Gordon, then Marquis of Huntley, at their 
head, they would have been heels over head before the 
cloth was removed. 
Now, if you imagine glass, instead of the canvass* for 
such an erection, nothing could be cheaper, or more 
strongly put together. But then it was all a fixture; and 
I question if the lawyers would allow one inch of it to be 
removed, even by a Highland chieftain, unless it was 
either on his own ground, or with the consent of the land¬ 
lord : therefore, anything with props to keep up the roof 
will not answer the purpose I have in view. You must 
make it all to screw together, so as to be capable of 
unscrewing, packing up on a cart, or railway truck, and 
of being set up at Sydenham, or farther off, when its 
time at Surbiton is ended. 
I find a crying necessity for such portable houses 
among an influential class of our subscribers in these parts; 
and I know that, without the roof is made in sashes, in 
the usual way, there is no end to the bother and breakage 
of glass when they are to be thus removed. Also, that if 
we can get rid of rafters in the first instance, a serious 
item of expense will be got rid of at one dash ; and, in the 
next, a greater amount of light,—say, one-sixth part,— 
than is possible with rafters, will be obtained. Then, on 
the authority of Mr. Rivers, the more light the larger 
the ventilation; and the more air is admitted to these 
houses, the less danger there is of scorching from bad 
glass, and the more healthy the foliage,—hi all which I 
perfectly agree, and with all who advocate such w ise 
measures. I often said that my own conservatory, which 
is 20 feet high in the centre and 18 feet high at the sides, 
and span-roofed, is cooler on a calm day in July than the 
open air out in the garden. My ventilation is so perfect 
as to make a strong current, and that current, on a calm 
day, makes all the difference between the heat inside and 
out. This house is neither 100 feet long nor 20 feet wide, 
and was called a “poking place” by Mr. West, of the 
Waltonian ; yet I proved a principle in it which has been 
verified at the Crystal Palace, at Sydenham. I want 
portable, well-ventilated, and well-lighted houses, from the 
“poking” dimension up to 100 feet, and all without 
rafters, or internal supports, both on account of more 
light, and to shun lawsuits and all wrangling about fix¬ 
tures. I may say, however, that I know the thing can 
be done; I only want to know who can do it, that there 
may not be any chances of infringing the patent laws P 
This brings me back more than a dozen years, to Mr. 
Thomson’s retort boiler, wliich will presently show' the 
necessity of looking well a-head when anything fresh is 
in the wind. The retort boiler was invented exactly as 
Mr. Thomson contrived it, some years before he left the 
neighbourhood of London; but it was not possible for 
him to know that, without a public inquiry, such as I 
make this day, with the retort boiler before my mind’s 
eye. The first retort boiler was suggested to me by a 
well-known eivil engineer, Mr. Hurwood, of Ipswich, in 
the year 1844. He was then one of the partners of Bond, 
Hurwood, and Co. He used to say, that hot-water boilers 
in general would not be perfect in principle till there was 
a complete circulation within the boiler itself, as no 
boiler could receive the heat equally over all its surface. 
This principle, or circulation, within the boiler was neces¬ 
sary for a perfect instrument, although the necessity for 
the principle might never occur in practice. We often 
recurred to the subject, till at last, in 1847 or 1848, the 
boiler of the conservatory at Shrubland Park gave way, 
and I made up my mind to put the principled boiler to 
the test in earnest. But I told Sir William Middleton 
how the question stood,—that it was quite a new thing ; 
that Mr. Hurwood was confident in the superiority of 
such a boiler; and that, as far as I coidd judge, it must 
be one of the best kinds of boilers : and so it has proved. 
Mr. Hurwood got a mould made for the new boiler, which 
is probably at the foundry to this day ; but Mr. Hurwood 
