238 SCIENCE IN SHOUT CHAPTERS. 



bubbles and of those of other effervescing drinks. Carbonic oxide, 

 the product of semi-combustion, is quite different. Breathed only 

 in small quantities, it acts as a direct poison, producing peculiarly 

 oppressive headaches. Besides this, it has a disagreeable odor. It 

 thus resembles many other products, of imperfect combustion, such 

 as those which are familiar to everybody who has ever blown out a 

 tallow candle and left the red wick to its own devices. 



On this account alone any kind of iron stove capable of becom- 

 ing red- hot should be utterly condemned. If Englishmen did their 

 travelling in North Europe in the winter, their self-conceit respecting 

 the comfort of English houses would be cruelly lacerated, and none 

 such would perpetrate the absurdity of applying the name of " Ger- 

 man stove" to the iron fire-pots that are sold as stoves by English 

 ironmongers. 



As the Germans use so great a variety of stoves, it scarcely cor- 

 rect to apply the title of German to any kind of stove, unless we 

 limit ourselves to North Germany. There, and in Sweden, Denmark, 

 Norway, and Russia, the construction of stoves becomes a speciality. 

 The Russian stove is perhaps the most instructive to us, as it affords 

 the greatest contrast to our barbarous device of a hole in the wall 

 into which fuel is shovelled, and allowed to expend nine tenths of its 

 energies in heating the clouds while only the residual ten per cent, 

 does anything toward warming the room. With the thermometer 

 outside below zero, a house in Moscow or St. Petersburg is kept in- 

 comparably more warm and comfortable, and is better ventilated 

 (though, perhaps, not so much ventilated) than a corresponding class 

 of house in England, where the outside temperature is 20 or 30 

 degrees higher, and this with the consumption of about one fourth of 

 the fuel which is required for the production of British bronchitis. 



This is done by, first of all, sacrificing the idiotic recreation of fire- 

 gazing, then by admitting no air into the chimney but that which is 

 used for the combustion of the fuel ; thirdly, by sending as little as 

 possible of the heat up the chimney ; fourthly, by storing the heat 

 obtained from the fuel in a suitable reservoir, and then allowing it 

 gradually and steadily to radiate into the apartment from a large but 

 not overheated surface. 



The Russian stove by which these conditions are fulfilled is 

 usually an ornamental, often a highly artistic, handsome article of 

 furniture, made of fire-resisting porcelain, glazed and otherwise dec- 

 orated outside. Internally it is divided by thick fire-clay walls into 

 several upright chambers or flues, usually six. Some dry firewood is 

 lighted in a suitable fireplace, and is supplied with only sufficient air 

 to effect combustion, all of which enters below and passes fairly 

 through the fuel. The products of combustion being thus undiluted 

 with unnecessary cold air, are very highly heated, and in this state 

 pass up compartment or flue No. 1 ; they are then deflected, and pass 

 down No. 2 ; then up No. 3, then down No. 4, then up No. 5, then 

 down No. 6. At the end of this long journey they have given up 

 most of their heat to the 24 heat-absorbing surfaces of the fire-clay 

 walls of the six flues. 



When the interior of the stove is thus sufficiently heated, the fire- 

 door and the communication with the chimney are closed, and the 

 fire is at once extinguished, having now done its day's work ; the 

 interior of the stove has bottled up its calorific force, and holds it 



