DOMESTIC ECONOMY OF FUEL. 



193 



While the regulating agency occupies the thoughts, scarcely any 

 thought is given to those astounding processes and results due to the 

 energies regulated. The genesis of the vast productive and manufac- 

 turing and distributing agencies which has gone on spontaneously, 

 often hindered, and at best only restrained, by governing powers, is 

 passed over with unobservant eyes. And thus, by continually con- 

 templating the power which keeps in Order, and contemplating rarely, 

 if at all, the activities that are kept in order, there is produced an ex- 

 tremely one-sided theory of society. 



Clearly, it is with this as it is with the kinds of bias previously con- 

 sidered the degree of it bears a certain necessary relation to the 

 tempory phase of progress. It can diminish only as fast as society 

 advances. A well-balanced social self-consciousness, like a well-bal- 

 anced individual self-consciousness, is the accompaniment of a high 

 evolution. 



DOMESTIC ECONOMY OF FUEL. 



By Captain DOUGLAS GALTON, C.B., F. E. S. 



MY endeavor will be, to show that there may be obtained, from a 

 much-diminished consumption of coal in fireplaces used for 

 domestic purposes, all the advantages which have hitherto resulted 

 from the wasteful expenditure which has prevailed. 



I have no expectation of stating any thing that is actually new, 

 because the functions and the attributes of heat and combustion have 

 long been thoroughly discussed in their application to industrial ob- 

 jects. I hope, however, to draw attention to important considerations 

 which govern the application of heat, and which are very generally 

 neglected in fireplaces, in kitchen-ranges, and in most warming ap- 

 paratus. 



I think I may say, without hesitation, that the quantity of fuel now 

 absolutely wasted in our houses amounts to at least five-sixths of the 

 coal consumed. That is to say, if the greatest care and the best meth- 

 od of applying the heat were in all cases adopted, we could eifect in 

 heating and cooking all that we now effect, with one-sixth of the coal 

 we now use ; and, if, in the construction of our fireplaces and cooking 

 apparatus, simple principles were recognized and ordinary care was 

 used, we might without difficulty save from two-thirds to half of the 

 coal consumed. 



In my remarks on this question I intend to confine myself rather 

 to the enunciation of the principles which should govern the applica- 

 tion of heat for domestic purposes, than to give descriptions, except 

 in a general way, of special appliances. 



VOL. III. 13 



