K. DOMESTIC AND HOUSEHOLD ECONOMY. 469 



K. DOMESTIC AND HOUSEHOLD ECONOMY. 



TRAVELEKS' BEDS. 



A very portable traveling-bed is manufactured by Sauer- 

 man, of Flensburg, Germany, which can be rolled up like a 

 shawl in a cylindrical form, twenty-three to twenty-seven 

 and a half inches long, and seven to nine and a half inches in 

 diameter, the price ranging from $5 50 to $22, according to 

 the size and quality. It consists of a light hair mattress, 

 including single or double air pillows, a fine woolen coverlet, 

 a camp-stool, attachments and cords for adapting the mat- 

 tress as a hammock, and apparatus for filling the pillows 

 with air. 16 (7,YL, 171. 



IRON VESSELS FOR TRANSPORT OF SPIRITS. 



Iron Axssels for the transport of spirits are found to be 

 free from many of the defects of wooden ones, especially such 

 as cause loss. They are made of sheets less than one tenth 

 of an inch thick, of cylindrical form, about forty-seven inches 

 lono- and thirty-two inches in diameter, with ends slightly 

 convex. The bung is closed by rubber disks, and protected 

 by wooden hoops on each side; there are thin iron hoops 

 around each end, and the interior is protected from rusting 

 by a coating of gum or dextrine. 16 C, VI., 173. 



PLASTER AS A PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 



After the conflagration in Paris, it was generally found 

 that, with good plaster work over them, beams and columns 

 of wood were entirely protected from the fires. In cases 

 where limestone walls had been utterly ruined, on the out- 

 side, by the flames passing through the window openings, 

 the same walls, internally, escaped almost unscathed, owing 

 to their being coated with plaster. On many such plastered 

 w^alls the distemper decorations were still to be made out. 

 The iron roofs rendered good service, and the party walls of 

 each house, carried up right through the roof, proved a most 

 important precaution, for otherwise nothing could have pre- 

 vented the disastrous conflagration from being more exten- 



