SJK WILLIAM SIEMENS, F.R.S. 97 



in taking such a house you had only to furnish it to your own 

 mind, and be in the enjoyment of all reasonable creature comfort 

 from the moment you enter the same. This fond hope is destined, 

 however, to cruel disappointment ; the first evening you turn on 

 the gas, you find that although the pipes are there, the gas prefers 

 to pass out by the joints into the room instead of by the burners ; 

 the water in like manner takes its road through the ceiling, bring- 

 ing down with it a patch of plaster on to your carpet. But worst 

 of all, the products of combustion from the firegrates (made 

 probably to dimensions irrespective of the size of the room), 

 stoutly refuse to avail themselves of the chimney flues, preferring 

 to disperse themselves in volumes of smoke into the room. 

 Plumbers and chimney doctors are now put into requisition, 

 pulling up floors, dirtying carpets, and putting up gaunt-looking 

 chimney-pots ; the grates themselves have to be altered again and 

 again, until by slow degrees the house becomes habitable in a 

 degree, although you now only become fully aware of the in- 

 numerable drawbacks of the arrangements adopted. Nevertheless, 

 the house has been an excellent one " to sell," and the builder 

 adopts the same pattern for another block or two in an increasing 

 neighbourhood. Why should this builder adopt Captain Galton's 

 fireplace ? It will not cost him much, it is true, and it will save 

 the tenant a great deal in his annual coal bill, not to speak of the 

 comfort it would give him and his family ; but nobody demands it 

 of him, it would give him some trouble to arrange his details and 

 subcontracts, which are all settled beforehand, and so he goes on 

 building and selling houses in the usual routine way. Nor will 

 this state of things be altered until the dwellers in houses will 

 take the matter in hand, and absolutely refuse to put up with 

 builders' ways, or, what is still better, get builders who will put up 

 houses in their way. This is done to some extent by building 

 societies, but there is as yet too much of the old leaven left in the 

 trade, and the question itself is too little understood. 



Consumption in Smelting Operations. We now come to the 

 third branch of consumption, the smelting or metallurgical 

 furnace, which consumes about 40,000,000 of the 120 million 

 tons of the coal produced. Here also is great room for improve- 

 ment, the actual quantity of fuel consumed in heating a ton of 

 iron up to the welding point, or in melting a ton of steel is more 



VOL. III. H 



