298 Of securing houses and their inhabitants from fire, 
‘PosTSCRI PT. 
- Some detached matters will now be touched upon, which have 
been reserved for this place, because admitting of a more conve- 
nient notice here, than in the body of my leiter. 
I. I begin then by introducing some additional particulars, which 
have been promised respecting the plans of Lord Mahon (now Earl 
Stanhope) and of Mr. D. Hartley, for protecting buildings from fire. 
The statement of what regards Lord Mahon will be borrowed 
from the London Philosophical Transactions for 1778, Vol. 68, 
Part 2. 
1. The first object of the communication here to be noticed, con- 
cerns a wooden house, constructed at Chevening in Kent, for the 
purpose of performing in it, “in the most natural manner,” (as his 
Lordship expresses it,) his experiments on the subject here in question; 
and his Lordship speaks thus, respecting this part of his proceedings. 
* On the 26th of September, [1777,) Thad the honor to repeat 
some of my experiments before the President and some of the Fel- 
lows of the Royal Society, the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of the 
city of London, the committee of city lands, several of the foreign 
ministers, and a great number of other persons. The first experi- 
ment was to fill the lower room of the building (which was about 
twenty six feet long and sixteen wide) full of shavings and faggots, 
mixed.with combustibles; and to set them all on fire. The heat was 
so intense, that the glass of the windows was melted like so much 
sealing wax, and ran down in drops; yet the flooring boards of that 
very room were not burned through, nor was one of the side timbers, 
floor joists, or ceiling joists, damaged in the smallest degree; and 
the persons who went into the room immediately over the room filled 
with fire, did not feel any ill effects from it whatever ; even the floor 
of that room being perfectly cool during that enormous conflagration 
immediately anderneath."—So much for the wooden house ! (See 
PY 892. 
2. His Lordship, having made, what we may call an extemporary 
building, for the purpose of having it fairly burned throughout from 
top to bottom, proceeds thus in his statement.—“I then caused a 
kind of wooden building (of full fifty feet in length, and three sto- 
ries high in the middle), to be erected quite elose to the end of the 
secured wooden house [above mentioned]. I filled and covered this 
building with above eleven hundred large kiln faggots, and several 
