192 SCIENCE IN SH(fRT CHAPTERS. 



But suppose we were to say, "You love a cheerful blaze, 

 can afford to pay for it, and therefore care not how much 

 coal you waste in obtaining it. We also loye a cheerful 

 blaze, but have a great aversion to coal-smoke and tarry 

 vapors ; and we find that we can make a beautiful fire, 

 quite inoffensive even in the middle of the room, provided 

 we feed it with stale quartern loaves. We know that such 

 fuel is expensive, but can afford to pay for it, and choose 

 to do so." Would he not be shocked at the sight of the 

 blazing loaves, if this extravagance' were carried out ? 



This popular inconsistency of disregarding the waste of 

 a valuable and necessary commodity, of which the supply 

 is limited and unrenewable, while we have such proper 

 horror of wilfully wasting another similar commodity which 

 can be annually replaced as long as man remains in living 

 contact with the earth, will gradually pass away when 

 rational attention is directed to the subject. If the recent 

 very mild suggestion of a coal-famine does something 

 towards placing coal on a similar pedestal of popular venera- 

 tion to that which is held by the " staff of life," the million 

 a week that it has cost the coal consumer will have been 

 profitably invested. 



Many who were formerly deaf to the exhortations of fuel 

 economists are now beginning to listen. "Forty shillings 

 per ton " has acted like an incantation upon the spirit of 

 Count Eumford. After an oblivion of more than eighty 

 years, his practical lessons have again sprung up among us. 

 Some are already inquiring how he managed to roast 112 

 Ibs. of beef at the Foundling Hospital with 22 Ibs. of coal, 

 and to use the residual heat for cooking the potatoes, and 

 why it is that with all our boasted progress we do not now 

 in the latter third of the nineteenth century, repeat that 

 which he did in the eighteenth. 



The fact that the consumption of coal in London during 

 the first four months of 1873 has, in spite of increasing 

 population, amounted to 49,707 tons less than the corre- 

 sponding period of 1872, shows that some feeble attempts 

 have been made to economize the domestic consumption of 

 fuel. One very useful result of the recent scarcity of coal 

 has been the awakening of a considerable amount of general 



