SCHOOLROOM VENTILATION. 393 



jects is evidently one of Nature's weapons of defense. In some 

 animals it is developed in a wonderful manner. Wherever it is 

 found it becomes to the animal possessing it a powerful means 

 of defense by rendering it inconspicuous, and in some instances 

 wholly unnoticeable. 



-- 



SCHOOLROOM VENTILATION AS AN INVESTMENT. 



By GEOEGE henry KNIGHT. 



THE biographer * Carlyle relates that the father of Frederick 

 the Great scandalized the conventionalism of his day by re- 

 moving all upholstery from the electoral mansion ; an object-les- 

 son in personal cleanliness no doubt so little appreciated by his 

 contemporaries that, if the sturdy elector escaped the nickname of 

 "crank," it was because the word had not then been invented, at 

 least in Brandenburg. Even six generations later it may be 

 doubted whether Friedrich Wilhelm's antipathy to germ-haunts 

 has been realized outside a few modernly equipped infirmary 

 wards. To the sanitarist, however, even such merely tentative 

 application is a hopeful one, because he has learned to accept with 

 equanimity the impossibility of any other than a gradual adop- 

 tion of ideas greatly in advance of the average public sense, and 

 to recognize the fact that even conservatism has its uses : the keel 

 and the ballast which hold the ship to its course and, perchance, 

 prevent a capsize nay, sometimes even an anchor cast to wind- 

 ward may be as necessary as the guiding rudder or the propel- 

 ling sail. He has, therefore, no controversy with the slowness 

 of the change-drift if mainly in the direction of better conform- 

 ity with hygienic requirements ; he even looks forward to a time 

 when factories, dwellings, lecture rooms, stores, and every other 

 kind of edifice, public and private, will be as well ventilated and 

 be made as absolutely fire, vermin, and dust proof as the best 

 hospital wards. 



Public indifference to hygienic requirements was significantly 



* " Nothing could exceed his Majesty's simplicity of habitudes ; but one loves espe- 

 cially in him his scrupulous attention to cleanliness of person and environment. He washed 

 like a very Mussulman five times a day ; loved cleanliness in all things to a superstitious 

 extent, which trait is pleasant in the rugged man, and, indeed, of a piece with the rest of 

 his character. He is gradually changing all his silk and other cloth room-furniture. In 

 his hatred of dust he will not suifer a floor-carpet, even a stuffed chair, but insists on hav- 

 ing all of wood, where the dust may be prosecuted to destruction. Wife and womankind, 

 and those that take after them let such have stuffing and sofas ; he, for his part, sits on 

 mere wooden chairs sits and also thinks and acts, after the manner of a hyperborean Spar- 

 tan, which he was." History of Fredei'ick the Second, called the Great, edition 1858, p. 320, 

 by Thomas Carlyle. 



