352 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[April 24, 1885. 



houses with good garden ground who use narrow-gauge 

 or collapsible machines so that they may be able to take 

 them into the house, from being unaware how easy it is 

 to have a portable house in their garden. 



Some very useful houses made of corrugated iron are to 

 be purchast>d, and these answer the purpose of protection 

 tolerably well ; but they would be better if they were 

 provided with apertures, which, without admitting wet, 

 will admit of ventilation. Metal, also, is not the best 

 material of which such houses can be made, because it takes 

 up changes of temperature too rapidly. Many persons 

 object to the appearance of the galvanised iron, the bright 

 metal in the garden looking too conspicuous. This objection 

 can be got over by covering them with a coat of paint or 

 coloured varnish. 



f'SS- 



A light wooden house which can be cheaply made by any 

 carpenter, of feather-edged boards, laid on overlapping each 

 other, with apertures permitting of ventilation, is far better. 

 In this ventilation can be provided to any extent, by 

 placing strips of wood about 3 in. wide and a quarter of an 

 inch thick, between the ends of the feather-boards where 

 they are nailed on to the quarterings, which form the frame- 

 work of the house. Or the framework formed of quarter- 

 ings may be covered with strong canvas, which should 

 have two or three coats of paint. This would be cheaper 

 and lighter than wood, and answer every purpose as well. 

 A coat of paint over the canvas occasionally will make it 

 so durable that it will last for years. 



The floor of every tricycle-house should be raised above 

 the ground at least six inches, and a small slope placed in 

 front, which may be hung on hinges, to run the machine 

 readily into it. A good way of raising the floor is by 

 putting four wheels, about G in. diameter, under the corners 

 of the house, for otherwise it is often found, after such a 

 house has been built, that its position can be changed with 

 advantage. 



Where it is a matter of consideration that the tricycle 

 shelter shall be as sightly and as little conspicuous as 

 possible, I would advise that where the surrounding objects, 

 such as foliage ground or evergreens, are dark, the shelter 

 should be painted of a dark colour to harmonise with them. 

 In the case of its being surrounded with dark evergreens, 

 it .should be painted olive-green, with a few lines on the 

 sides of a lighter colour for tlie purpose of ornamentation. 

 Where it is among light objects, or in an open space, it 

 should be painted a sage-green, with the ornamental lines 

 in a rather darker shade of the same colour. 



There can be no doubt that, with an estimated number 

 of nearly half a million cycle riders amongst us, it will be 

 worth the while of builders before long to erect houses with 

 doorways wide enough for tricycles to pass through them, or, 

 better still, to provide a small outhouse to securely shelter 

 them. - . .■., .ji , .... ,, ., . ,i ■ .■,,,. 



CHAPTERS ON MODERN DOMESTIC 

 ECONOMY. 



XXIV.— THE FRAMEWORK OF THE DWELLING-HOUSE. 



STRUCTURAL EXAMPLES (continued). 



THE DISPOSAL OP HOUSEHOLD REFUSE. 



HENMAN'S "Safety Sanitary Trap," noticed in the 

 concluding remarks of our last issue, rightly pre- 

 supposes an unwholesome condition of things in the majority 

 of domestic drains and soil-pipes, and seeks to overcome 

 those grave defects by means of an easily-fixed and econo- 

 mical appliance, placed in such a position that it cannot 

 very well get out of order. With such a protection, the 

 simplest form of untrapped closet-basin can be used, pro- 

 vided that adequate means for flushing are employed. Of 

 these, and of the many varieties of excellent trapped 

 closets which have from time to time been devised, we 

 shall treat when we come to deal more specially with closet 

 furniture. 



Although excrementitious waste-products are extremely 

 offensive when fresh, they are, as a rule, innocuous, unless 

 tainted with disease-germs. It is not until about after a 

 lapse of four days in this climate that decomposition sets 

 in, and sewer-gases are produced. These consist princi- 

 pally of carbonic acid, light carburetted-hydrogen or marsh- 

 gas, heavy or bi-carburetted hydrogen (oleflant gas), sul- 

 phuretted hydrogen, and ammoniacal gas. All of these, 

 with the exception of marsh-gas, are more or less 

 poisonous, and especially dangerous within the rooms of 

 the house. One of the principnl means by which they are 

 liable to enter the abode is through a defective, and often- 

 times by way of an unused closet ; the gases are chiefly 

 drawn into the house in virtue of its relatively higher tem- 

 perature, when occupied and warmed with fires, <fec. 



We have often remarked that a thoroughly sound 

 system of ventilation applied to the house-drains would get 

 rid of the danger from sewer -gases, and we are, therefore, 

 glad to be able here to draw attention to a new invention, 

 not only for the removal of sewer-gases by the establish- 

 ment of an upward, continuous, and powerful current along 

 the soil-pipe, but, in addition, for the destruction of those 

 harmful products, associated, as they geuerally are, with 

 countless deadly germs. In an address on the reopening 

 of the " Parkes Museum of Hygiene," Professor Tyndall 

 said : — " The physician and the sanitarian have no 

 longer to fight against phantoms, requiring only the 

 fortuitous concourse of atoms to bring them into exist- 

 ence. Their enemy is revealed, and their business is to 

 thwart him, to intercept him, and to slay him. It is not 

 noxious gases but organised germs which, sown in the 

 body, and multiplying there indefinitely at the body's 

 expense, produce the most terrible diseases by which 

 humanity has been scourged. Contagia are living things. 

 Men and women have died by the million that bacteria 

 and bacilli might live. Reason repudiates this sacrifice of 



the greater to the le^s, and will invert it if possible 



These virulent organisms, these ferments of disease, hang 

 about the walls, the furniture, and the clothing of the 

 sick-room. How is the room to be disinfected ? They are 

 diffused in the air of our drains. How is that air, which 

 is sufficiently noxious on its own account, to be prevented 

 from entering our houses 1 We know how typhoid fever 

 is generally spread. How are our water and milk to be 

 protected from that contagion ? Our hospitals, it is said, 

 infect their neighbourhoods. Is not this preventible ? 

 Through the downcast shaft of a coalmine the fresh air 

 enters, sweeps the noxious gases of the mine along with it, 



