478 ANNUAL RECORD OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 

 SUGGESTION FOR DISPENSING WITH SMOKE-STACKS. 



Rev. Mr. Gibsone proposes a method for dispensing with 

 smoke-stacks, namely, by having a downward flue termina- 

 ting in the water-drains. He maintains that if the drains of 

 any district are connected with a ventilating furnace having 

 a lofty ornamental shaft, there would be at once obtained the 

 motive current of air, and a means of destroying the noxious 

 gases of our underground system, while the central furnace 

 would supply warm air or water, or even gas, to all the con- 

 tiguous dwellings, and the heavy fuliginous matters would be 

 condensed chiefly in the sewers. The result would be, first, 

 absence of smoke; second, diminution of cost in construction 

 of various chimney-stacks; third, absence of architectural 

 disfigurements, such as zinc cowls and red cylindric pots; 

 fourth, saving of fuel by total consumption of the smoke in 

 the grate, the fire burning downward instead of upward; fifth, 

 greater ease in cleansing the flues from soot, and in the re- 

 moval of ashes ; sixth, steadiness and irreversibility of air 

 draughts, and power of thoroughly ventilating a room even 

 when unfurnished with a fire. 



To this the editor of the Chemical News rejoins that the 

 idea is not a novel one, the same thing having occurred many 

 years ago to Mr. Spence, of Manchester, but the difficulty of 

 getting sufficient draught was so great that it could not be 

 carried out. A tower of an impracticable diameter would 

 have to be erected, and the leakages into the sewers would be 

 so numerous that, at a distance of one hundred yards from 

 the tower, no appreciable effect would be produced. 1 A, De- 

 cember 8,1871,275. 



INFLUENCE OF INCREASED HEIGHT OF BLAST FURNACES. 



In a paper by Mr. Plumb upon the effect of increasing the 

 height of blast furnaces in England, he remarks that in the 

 midland districts there were four old furnaces, built half a cen- 

 tury ago, each of them forty-five feet high. A new furnace 

 had recently been built, sixty feet high, in the place of one 

 of these, while there had been an addition of fifteen feet to 

 the height of another, so that there are now two furnaces of 

 sixty feet each, and two of forty-five feet, working side by 

 side. A comparison of the results of the two series shows 



