Manchester Memoirs, Vol. liii. (1908), No. 5. 



V. On the Local Intensification of Draug-ht produced 

 in a Horizontal Air Current by the Presence of an 

 Inclined Rod. 



By A. H. Gibson, M.Sc. 



Received November 6/ It, read November lyth. igoS. 



Among the many superstitions and beliefs which 

 have been handed down to the modern housewife from 

 the remote past, one of the most interesting and most 

 generally believed is that a poker, placed with its lower 

 end against the fender and the other end reared against 

 the bars of an ordinary firegrate without actually 

 touching the fire, has magical properties in inducing a 

 recalcitrant fire to burn up or to burn less smokily. 



The only explanation of it ever given to the author, 

 is evidently almost as old as the custom itself, dating 

 back from a time when the devil and his attendant 

 demons took a more immediately personal interest in 

 household economics than is the case in the present 

 prosaic age. It attributes the beneficial effect to the fact 

 that the poker when so placed forms the sign of the cross 

 with the fire bars, this driving away the evil spirit to 

 whose influence the behaviour of the fire is of course due. 

 While perhaps not altogether satisfying to one of a 

 modern scientific school of thought, this explanation is 

 not without interest. 



The idea that there might, after all, be some scientific 

 basis for the old belief first occurred to the author one 

 evening when, standing in front of a smoky fire, he 

 chanced to rest the end of the poker on the upper bar 



December 24th, igo8. 



