Securities against Fire, fyc. » 289 



tiated, we may then congratulate ourselves on the discovery of an ap- 

 paratus so simple, cheap, portable, and easily preserved, that few 

 towns possessed of a moderate population need be without one; and 

 smaller collections of people ought to be instructed in the mode of 

 providing themselves with an extempore substitute; which however 

 will probably require some experiments before it can be fully relied 

 upon* 



4. In casting my eyes lately over the paper published by Lord 

 Mahon, (now Earl Stanhope) on the subject of securing buildings 

 from conflagration, the following passage struck me (if I may be par- 

 doned the liberty of stating it) as containing an oversight. The pas- 

 sage is this, being correctly copied, including its italics: "In most 

 houses it is necessary only to secure the floors ." — Perhaps by floors 

 his lordship means only the upper boards on which we tread, in pass- 

 ing over a house ; and if so, I have nothing more to remark ; — but if 

 he designs to intimate that in most houses we may omit attention to 

 the stairs, he differs from French architects and from Dr. Frank- 

 lin, In any event, as his lordship in his paper tells us how to treat 

 stairs and even partitions, so as to make them fire proof, we are at 

 no loss how to proceed. 



5. Whoever wishes to see the whole of Lord Stanhope's paper as 

 given in the London Philosophical Transactions, will find it reprint- 

 ed with very trifling variation in Dodsley's Annual Register for 1779; 

 and consequently he will there learn how to carry his lordship's plans 

 into execution ; and he will also learn the cost of each part of the 

 work (as prices stood in England in 1778). — Should his lordship 

 incline to listen to the voice of some of the friends of humanity, he 

 will leave behind him minutes of the theory by which he conducted 

 his practice, as well as an account of some of his more important un- 

 recorded experiments. 



6. In the present supplement I may be allowed to confess, that I 

 spoke too transiently in my letter of the probability of steeping timber 

 in certain liquids ; in order to render it difficult for slight flames to 

 take hold of it. Our chemists and artists are however now ripe for 

 making important discoveries on this subject. The same may be said 

 as to the invention of modes for extinguishing flames when raging. 

 The offer of prizes for successful methods of accomplishing these two 

 purposes may have the double effect of exciting the attention of skill- 

 ful men to these matters ; and of engaging the public to become suf- 

 ficiently interested in them to think of applying what shall be brought 

 into their view to actual practice. 



