36 SCIENCE IN SHORT CHAPTERS. 



of ruinous severity will stir the blind prejudices of Englishmen, and 

 force them to desist from their present stupid and sinful waste of the 

 greatest mineral treasure of the island. 



One of the grossest of our national manifestations of conservative 

 stupidity is our senseless idolatrous worship of that domestic fetich, 

 " the Englishman's fireside." We sacrifice health, we sacrifice com- 

 fort, we begrime our towns and all they contain with sooty foulness, 

 we expend an amount far exceeding the interest of the national debt, 

 and discount our future prospects of national prosperity, in order 

 that we may do what ? Enjoy the favorite recreation of idiots. It is 

 a well-known physiological fact that an absolute idiot, with a cranium 

 measuring sixteen inches in circumference, will sit and stare at a 

 blazing fire for hours and hours continuously, all the day long, except 

 when feeding, and that this propensity varies with the degree of 

 mental vacuity. 



Few sights are more melancholy than the contemplation of a party 

 of English fire- worshippers seated in a semicircle round the family 

 fetich on a keen frosty day. They huddle together, roast their 

 knees, and grill their faces, in order to escape the chilling blast that 

 is brought in from all the chinks of leaky doors and windows by the 

 very agent they employ, at so much cost, for the purpose of keeping 

 the cold away. The bigger the fire, the greater the draught, the hot- 

 ter their faces the colder their backs, the greater the consumption of 

 coal the more abundant the crop of chilblains, rheumatism, catarrh, 

 and other well-deserved miseries. 



The most ridiculous element of such an exhibition is the compla- 

 cent self-delusion of the victims. They believe that their idol be- 

 stows upon them an amount of comfort unknown to other people, 

 that it affords the most perfect and salubrious ventilation, and, above 

 all, that it is a " cheerful " institution. The " cheerfulness" is, 

 perhaps, the broadest part of the whole caricature, especially when 

 we consider that, according to this theory of the cheerfulness of fire- 

 gazing, the 16-inch idiot must be the most cheerful of all human 

 beings. 



The notion that our common fireplaces and chimneys afford an 

 efficient means of ventilation is almost too absurd for serious dis- 

 cussion. Everybody who has thought at all on the subject is aware 

 that in cold weather the exhalations of the skin and lungs, the prod- 

 ucts of gas-burning, etc., are so much heated when given off that 

 they rise to the upper part of the room (especially if any cold outer 

 air is admitted), and should be removed from there before they cool 

 again and descend. Now, our fireplace openings are just where they 

 ought not to be for ventilation ; they are at the lower part of the . 

 room, and thus their action consists in creating a current of cold air 

 or " draught" from doors and windows, which cold current at once 

 descends, and then runs along the floor, chilling our toes and pro- 

 voking chilblains. 



This cold fresh air, having done its worst in the way of making us 

 uncomfortable, passes directly up the chimney without doing us any 

 service for purposes of respiration. Our mouths are usually above 

 the level of the chimney opening, and thus we only breathe the viti- 

 ated atmosphere which* it fails to remove. 



Not only does the fire-opening fail to purify the air we breathe, it 

 actually prevents the leakage of the upper part of the windows and 



