50 SCIENCE Itf SHORT CHAPTERS. 



In Rumford's kitchens, such as those he built for the Baron 

 de Lerchenfeld and for the House of Industry at Munich, the 

 kitchener is a solid block of masonry of work-bench hight at 

 top, and with a deep bay in the middle, wherein the cook 

 stands surrounded by his boilers, steamers, roasters, ovens, 

 etc., all within easy reach, each one supplied by its own sepa- 

 rate fire of very small dimensions, and carefully closed with 

 non-conducting doors. Each fire is lighted when required, 

 charged with only the quantity of fuel necessary for the work 

 to be done, and then extinguished or allowed to die out. 



It is true that Rumford used wood, which is more easily 

 managed in this way than coal. If we worked as he did, we 

 might use wood likewise, and in spite of its very much higher 

 price do our cooking at half its present cost. This would 

 effect not merely " smoke abatement" but "smoke extinc- 

 tion, " so far as cooking is concerned. But the lighting of 

 fires is no longer a troublesome and costly process as in the 

 days of halfpenny bundles of firewood. To say nothing of 

 the improved fire-lighters, we have gas everywhere, and noth- 

 ing is easier than to fix or place a suitable Bunsen or solid 

 flame burner under each of the fireplaces (an iron gaspipc, 

 perforated below to avoid clogging, will do), and in two or 

 three minutes the coals are in full blaze ; then the gas may be 

 turned off. The writer has used such an arrangement in his 

 study for some years past, and starts his fire in full blaze in 

 three minutes quite independent of all female interference. 



I have no doubt that ultimately gas will altogether supersede 

 coal for cooking ; but this and all other scientific improvements 

 in domestic comfort and economy must be impossible with the 

 present generation of uneducated domestics, whose brains 

 (with few exceptions) have become torpid and wooden from 

 lack of systematic exercise during their period of growth. 



