828 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



direct upon the table, with — if gas be used — side-brackets next the 

 sideboard, and on either side of the mantel-piece, so as to distribute 

 the light all over the room, and light up the pictures or whatever else 

 is upon the walls, is infinitely better than a great blaze over the table, 

 neither pleasant nor comfortable to those who have to face its glare, 

 and ofttimes unpleasant heat. To avoid all this, it is essential that 

 pure fresh air shall be introduced and distributed over the room, to 

 take the place of that which necessarily becomes foul and tainted by 

 fumes of cooked meats, gas, and the straining of the cubical contents 

 of air-supply by a larger number than usual of people using the room. 

 If there be no means of providing fresh air, and no means of ex- 

 tracting foul air, it follows that, in a very short time, the good air 

 originally contained in the room will become tainted, and at last heat- 

 ed and foul. 



Stand on a chair in an ordinary London room, about an hour after 

 it has been lit up and the dinner commenced, and you will then obtain 

 for yourselves some practical knowledge of the suffocating nature of 

 the upper stratum of air, and will not wonder that faintness, nausea, 

 and headache, are often necessary portions of a dinner-party in an 

 improperly ventilated room. 



All this can be cured by providing in, say, each corner a tube, ad- 

 justed in proportion to the size and height of the room, for the access 

 of fresh air through gratings from the outside wall ; and the current 

 and amount of air injected, so to speak, into the room, can be easily 

 adjusted by an ordinary butterfly valve, and all dust and soot, and 

 other impurities kept back by a piece of fine silk or wet sponge. 

 These tubes are often put in much too small, and the size of the out- 

 side grating is not considered ; in all cases the size of the tube should 

 be proportioned to the cubical contents of the rooms, and the exter- 

 nal grating should be, practically, twice the area of that of the tube, 

 as the iron-work of the grating, as a rule, diminishes its usefulness in 

 ventilating area by about half. 



If it be not possible to arrange for an extract shaft in the ceiling, 

 a large-sized ventilator may be put in the flue over the fireplace, pro- 

 vided always it be fitted with talc flaps to prevent all back draught ; 

 but even the introduction of fresh air alone by some such means as 

 those I have named will make a difference in a few minutes of many 

 degrees in the temperature of the room. 



In ordinary houses nothing has struck me as so wanting in thought 

 as the general arrangement of the staircase. As a rule, you enter from 

 the front door into a narrow passage-way, with perhaps an internal 

 screen, with folding-doors which are rarely shut, and immediately 

 opposite is the main staircase of the house, so that any one, on enter- 

 ing, not only commands the absolute thoroughfare of the house, but 

 sees everybody who goes up or comes down, by which privacy is ma- 

 terially interfered with, and the whole house is made subject to sud- 



