88 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



that many people now suffer for the want of pure air. For, 

 if it be a question between warmth and pure air, too many of 

 us will have the warmth, but let the pure air go. No sleep- 

 ing-room has the standard requisite for healthy ventilation, 

 which does not have a clear opening outside the building, by 

 chimney or lowered window, of one foot area at least, although 

 an open door into the hall may at times answer the purpose. 

 The air of an ordinary sleeping-room, without good means of 

 ventilation, is unfit to be re-breathed after it has been closed 

 for an hour with the sleeper in bed. 



But there are cases where this is overdone. The sturdy 

 old-fashioned idea still prevails, that a cool or cold apartment 

 is the best to sleep in, and is still very correct, if not so cold 

 as to require an unhealthy amount of bedding above or be- 

 low (or both) the sleeper ; for a bed can be only healthful 

 as a proper amount of air is passing tlirough it from below 

 upwards while it is occupied. 



When we sleep, we need more clothing than when awake 

 and active, since the powers of life are more dormant ; and 

 on this very account we need to take pains to have more 

 fresh air by night than by day. And yet is it not the too 

 universal custom to close the doors when we retire, so that 

 we shut off many of the currents which circulate by day? 

 And for the seven or eight hours of sleep no one passes 

 through the room to stir up the air with fresh life. 



Let us, then, try to remember that we need the precaution 

 of an opening into the chimney, or the throwing-together of 

 two or more rooms, or the dropping of a window, through 

 all the spring, summer, and fall months of the year, in order 

 to secure healthful air by night. We want the air neither 

 hot nor cold where we sleep. We suffer by restlessness 

 if the air be too hot ; and, if too cold, we draw upon the 

 vital energies too strongly for the proper amount of animal 

 heat. 



It is still a prevalent custom in many farmhouses to open 

 the bed-room window in the early morning, scatter the bed- 

 ding on various articles of furniture about the room, and so 

 leave it for six or eight hours, for a so-called airing, and this 

 in the coldest as well as other seasons of the year. 



Now, this is thorough work so far as ventilation of bed- 

 room and bedding is concerned : it is, perhaps, perfectly done. 



