1851.] OF THE ROYAL INSTITUTION. 8l 
and making it subservient to the important function of free and whole- 
some ventilation, is not to be taken as a mere suggestion, and now for 
the first time made. It has been in effective operation for six or seven 
years, and is found to answer well with the simple appliances referred 
to. But it is the mode and the principle of action that it is desired 
to recommend, and not the appliances, since persons more skilled in 
mechanical contrivances than the author professes to be, may probably 
be able to devise others better adapted to the purpose.* 
The mode referred to of warming and ventilating apartments by 
their own fires is most easy of application, and in houses of all kinds, 
great and small, old and new, and as the warmth derived from the 
fire in any case, comes directly by the in-draughted air, as well as 
by radiation of heat into the air of the apartment, fuel is econo- 
mized. If the register flap be made to open and shut, by any 
means which give easy command over it, so that it may be opened 
more or less according to the occasion, and this be attended to, the 
economy willbe assured; for it is quite unnecessary to leave the same 
space open over the fire after the steam and smoke arising from 
fresh fuel have been thrown off, as may be necessary immediately after 
coaling. The opening by theregister valve into the flue may be reduced 
when the smoke has been thrown off, so as to check the draught of air 
through the fire, and greatly to increase the draught by the upper 
opening into the flue, to the advantage of the ventilation and to 
the saving of fucl, while the heat from the incandescent fuel will 
be thereby rather increased than diminished. 
Moreover the system being applicable in the cottage of the labourer, 
as fully and as easily as in the better appointed dwellings of those who 
need not economize so closely as labouring people are obliged to ecv- 
nomize, the warmed air about the grate in a lower room may be con- 
veyed directly from the air-chamber about the grate by a metal, or pot 
pipe, up the chimney flue, and be delivered in any upper room 
next to the same fiue and requiring warmth and ventilation, the 
process of ventilation applied to the lower room being applicable 
to the upper room also, 
The indicated means by which winter ventilation is obtained are not 
of course equally efficient in summer, for the draught of the fire is 
wanting; but the inlet at the low level for fresh air, and the outlet for 
the spent air at the upper level continuing always open, the heat 
which the flue will in most cases retain through the summer aided by 
that of the sun’s rays upon the chimney top, secures a certain 
amount of up-draught, which is not without its effect upon the in- 
draught by the lower inlet even when windows and doors are shut. 
While it is obvious that the air drawn into any house for the 
purpose of in-door ventilation need not be other than that which 
* The appliances used by Mr. Hosking, will be found more fully described 
in his ‘‘ Healthy Homes”’ published by Mr. Murray. 
