ABSTRACT
This chapter revisits the archaic science of vegetality, the study of qualities unique to plant life. The term 'forcing-house' was one of a number commonly applied in traditional horticulture, along with the forcing-bed, -field, -frame, -glass, -ground and -pit, to describe enclosures in which vegetable growth was accelerated by artificial means, primarily heating. Traditionally forcing-houses were simple horticultural structures. It is necessary to consider more carefully the development of the glasshouse as a structure conceived and built by humans for plants in the light of terms set by biology and, ultimately, environmental and human sciences. One should reflect on the machinations of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century science, vegetality and mechanicism. Applied to the circumstances of human existence, an economy of means encouraged thoughts on the adaptation of building forms to their surroundings. Nature was also studied using novel devices and experimental instruments intended to isolate its different aspects, its constituent elements or forces, in order to explain plant and animal physiology.
