126 HEATING. 



fore, must look into the furnace, and consider chemically as well 

 as practically, the operations which are there going on, so that 

 we may improve its arrangements, and adapt them so as to give 

 full practical effect to the several processes which constitute 

 combustion. 



To enable our practical readers to obtain a more accurate 

 knowledge of the processes going on in the furnace, and of the 

 results of the common mode of managing the fires of extensive 

 forcing houses, we will enter more fully upon the constituents 

 of coal, and the gases thereby generated, which form such an 

 important part of the fuel itself, and which, by their escape into 

 the atmosphere from the chimney, or into the atmosphere of the 

 house from the flue, become the source of immense loss of heat. 

 And, in the latter case, the loss is more than doubled, as they 

 are destructive in the highest degree to every kind of vegetable 

 life. 



In undertaking to show how these evils may be remedied, we 

 must not be understood to concur in the exploded opinion, that 

 these gases may be consumed by the methods hitherto used for 

 that purpose, viz., by passing the smoke over a body of red-hot 

 fuel at a distance from the burning and smoking mass. And 

 however desirable it may be to know of some way of preventing 

 smoke from being emitted in clouds from the chimney of hot- 

 houses, yet, if we can discover no other method of obviating the 

 evil, except " burning it," according to the common acceptation 

 of that word, I fear we must continue to put up with the loss 

 and annoyance as it is. 



It is not our purpose here to show how the smoke from fuel 

 may be burned ; but rather, we will attempt to show how fuel 

 may be burned without smoke. And, let it be observed, this 

 distinction involves the main question of economy of fuel. 



When smoke is once produced in a furnace or flue, we believe 

 it to be as difficult to burn it, (and convert it to heating pur- 

 poses,) as to burn and convert the smoke issuing from the flame 

 of a candle to the purposes of light. If, indeed, we could collect 

 the smoke and unconsumed gases of a furnace, and separate 

 them from the products of combustion which the flues carry off, 

 they might, subsequently, be made instrumental to the purposes 



