A great deal has been said in your columns about steam heating, and its advantages in all respects in heating greenhouses, over all methods. I thought I would give my own experience, it being more practical than some others, and so may be of some value to parties contemplating putting in steam for heating purposes. So much is claimed for steam heating, in regard to saving time, fuel, attention, regulation of temperature, first cost of construction, etc, that it is really astonishing that every florist in the country does not take advantage of the inducements offered and saddle around at once and put in steam, especially those in the East who are the most successful in growing plants and flowers, growing them without steam heat, as well as we do with it. Our city takes the lead in steam heating, having six large establishments all heated by steam, but nothing extraordinary is produced in the way of growing cut flowers, as all the fine flowers that are used in our city and and as far west as Chicago, are shipped from the East.

Our plant house consists of 30,000 ft. of glass, heated by one boiler of about 25 horse-power, and to heat this extent of glass it requires over 6000 ft. of 2-inch pipe, which to heat by low pressure of steam as some advocate, is ridiculous, we using as high as 50 lbs. of steam with all the valves open, to keep near the desired temperature in cold weather. But if the valves were all shut off from the boiler the steam guage would indicate about 100 lbs. which is decidedly not low pressure, and to use 4-inch cast iron pipes that are used for hot water heating with any or near such pressure, would be rather dangerous, as we had two or three bursts with our pipes of 2-inch. Some assert that houses situated two or three hundred feet from the boiler are as easily heated as those near it, which I will show of my own experience does not prove so, as we have some of our houses 200 ft. from the boiler and some not 10 ft. which are kept at 650 or 750 with almost any pressure of steam, and those 200 ft. away want about 10 lbs. steam until they get to 650 for there is naturally more condensation, than near the boiler, where we have live steam at all times.

In regard to saving fuel, I will give an idea what we use throughout a season, and then let others judge for themselves whether there is a saving of one-half or one-third, which I doubt very much. We use between 9,000 and 10,000 bushels of coal each season, aggregating about 350 tons, at a cost of between $400 and $500; but as we haul all our own coal we save very nearly that amount, which would make the total cost of fuel delivered on place about #800 per season. At the same time bear in mind that we are in the coal region and have comparatively cheap fuel, as our prices range from two cents to six or seven cents from the lowest to best quality of coal. Summing up our coal bill for last January it amounted to $73.00. It must also be understood that it takes a much greater fire to generate steam, than it does to heat water or flues, and as soon as your steam goes down, the pipes get cold, whereas by hot water or flue heating they remain warm for a long time, and for that reason it requires close attention to have complete control of temperature by steam heating; for you have, say 15 lbs. steam on the guage and have the houses at the desired temperature and then the fire may be forgotten, as is often the case, the steam goes down and the houses get colder in less than one hour.

There is no doubt at all that steam heating takes more attention than any other system, especially if an even temperature is desired, as our fire must be looked after every fifteen minutes in cold weather to keep up steam, and consequently there must be a competent and reliable man to take charge of the firing all night, another expense of no little importance, as we keep our fireman from October till the end of May at a salary of $9.00 per week. Some parties tried to fire with their greenhouse hands, and had them work one-half day and fire at night, but they had to give it up, as it is impossible for a man to do that for any length of time; for to fire all night is, as I have experienced, much harder work than any of the greenhouse hands' day labor. I would rather work two full days than fire one night. I will admit that all large concerns heated by hot water or flues, need a man all night to look after the many fires, but for places of 15,000 ft. of glass or little more, it is not necessary; but with steam heating you may depend on it that it is impossible to do without one.

A great mistake with some florists is to have only one boiler, for if anything should happen to it, they would be left at the mercy of Jack Frost, and would probably lose their whole stock, as it takes considerable time to make repairs, and while making them you can't have any steam to heat. I don't want to intimidate any one as concerns danger, but at the same time I wish to say that something might happen, and if you have only one boiler, as we had the first year we started, you may be tried severely as we were; in fact once I gave up all hopes, for the temperature in the houses got near 32°but we overcame the difficulty in time to prevent any further trouble. Now we have two boilers and if the one should "blow up" and there is anything left of the other one, we fire in it at once, but there is not much danger of bursting as long as you have reliable men to fire; even hot water boilers will burst; Mr. P. Henderson told me of two boilers which he had blown up at one time by careless handling.

In April's issue of the Gardeners' Monthly, a florist from Philadelphia, estimates for a house of 22x115 ft., 1000 ft. of 1 1/4-inch pipe; now we have in three of our houses 22x130 ft., 1000 ft. of 2-inch pipe in each house, and last winter we had trouble to keep our houses near 500 in cold weather, around zero, with 30 lbs. or more of steam on the guage and all the valves open; so I doubt whether that quantity of 1 1/4-inch pipe would be sufficient. I intend adding 230 ft. to each house to keep about 650 in cold weather, but as our houses are rather higher than the most of that size, some allowance must be made. To conclude I will say that I am not against steam heat by any means, for I would not dream of changing it to any other system of heating; but if I had my houses heated with hot water as perfectly in all details as Mr. P. Henderson's I would never think of putting in steam, no matter what inducements were offered.