326 SCIENCE IN SHORT CHAPTERS. 



boil a kettle of water for breakfast, a fire sufficient to cook 

 for a dinner party of twenty is at work. This is kept on 

 all day long, because it is just possible that the master of 

 the house may require a glass of grog at bedtime. There 

 may be dampers and other devices for regulating this fire, 

 but such regulation, even if applied, does very little so long- 

 as the capacity of the grate remains, and as a matter of or- 

 dinary facl; the dampers and other regulating devices arc 

 neglected altogether; the kitchen fire is blazing and roar- 

 ing to waste from 6 or 7 A. M. to about midnight, in order 

 to do about three hours and a half work, i.e., the dinner 

 for ten, and a nominal trifle for the other meals. 



In Eumford'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 height 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 separate fire of very small di- 

 mensions, 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 Kumford 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 

 extinction" so far as cooking is concerned. But the light- 

 ing 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 every- 

 where, and nothing is easier than to fix or place a suitable 

 Bunsen or solid flame burner under each of the fireplaces 

 (an iron gaspipe, 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. 



