XXI. _Observations upon forcing Garden Rhubarb_. By Mr. William Stothard.
This plan is perhaps the best that can be followed, as it is at once the most certain and the most simple. You sow rhubarb seed on a rich moist border in the beginning of April, [p174] The young plants are well thinned during the summer; in the end of October they are very carefully transplanted into forcing-pots, five or six in each pot. They are placed in a north aspect, to recover the effect of their removal from the seed-bed, and in a month they are fit for forcing. We can safely recommend this method.
XXII. _Account of some remarkable Holly Hedges and Trees in Scotland_. By Joseph Sabine, Esq.
This is in elaborate account of extraordinary specimens of hollies, and appears to have been written with a view to induce the more general cultivation in this country of that very valuable tree. At Tynningham, the residence of the Earl of Harrington, are hedges extending to no less a distance than 2952 yards, in some cases thirteen feet broad, and twenty-five feet high. The age of these hedges is something more than a century. At the same place are individual trees of a size quite unknown in these southern districts. One tree measured five feet three inches in circumference at three feet from the ground; the stem is clear of branches to the height of fourteen feet, and the total height of the tree is fifty-four feet. The other places at which the hollies are of unusual size, are Colinton-house the seat of Sir William Forbes; Moredun, the seat of David Anderson, Esq.; Hopetoun-house, the seat of the Earl of Hopetoun, and Gordon-castle, where are several large groups of hollies, apparently planted by the hand of Nature.
XXIII. _An Account of a Plan of Heating Stoves by means of Hot Water, employed in the Garden of_ Anthony Bacon, Esq.
We conceive that a new æra in horticulture will commence with the publication of this paper. We already possessed contrivances of a sufficiently good kind for all purposes connected with artificial climate, except the power of commanding heat; for which the two methods hitherto employed have been either too clumsy or too costly, and in either case liable to numerous objections. The old mode of introducing heat into a stove, by means of brick flues, has long been considered so bad, that every scheme that promised to supersede such flues has been hailed with joy; the uncertainty of the quantity of heat given out by a brick flue, its continual liability to explosion, the impossibility of preventing the escape of smoke from between the joints of the bricks, are all evils that require a remedy. For this purpose steam was introduced, and with great advantage in extensive ranges of hothouses. But the enormous expense of erecting a steam [p175] apparatus, the danger attending its use in the charge of an unskilful or careless gardener, and also the rapid loss of heat from the pipes upon any neglect of the boiler, have all contributed to prevent the use of steam becoming very general. The plan now described has the great merit of possessing all the good qualities of steam, without any of its objectionable accompaniments; its cost cannot in any considerable degree exceed that of flues, and its effects are so certain and durable, that a house so heated may be almost said to be beyond the power of neglect on the part of the gardener.