ITS USES TO THE HUSBANDMAN. 243 



ticularly gas-lights — a single gas-burner consuming more 

 oxygen, according to Combe, and producing more car- 

 bonic acid gas, to deteriorate the atmosphere of a room, 

 than six or eight candles. 



We shall not speak of the other matters which commingle 

 in the atmosphere, as light, heat, and electricity, although 

 they possess a great influence upon animals and plants — 

 but proceed to the improvement, and the application to 

 rural affairs, of the facts already estabhshed. 



We MAY profit by these truths : — 



1. In selecting sites for our dwellings — taking care to 

 have them in airy situations, remote from marshes, ponds, 

 and stagnant waters, which vitiate, by the exhalations they 

 give, the atmosphere we breathe, and thereby generate 

 disease. 



2. In the manner of constructing our dwellings. The 

 cellars should be dry, with windows at opposite sides, for 

 ventilation, whenever the weather will permit. The 

 rooms should be lofty, and rather capacious than con- 

 tracted, should all open, by windows, to the exterior, and 

 should be ventilated every fair morning in summer. 



3. In improving our personal and domestic habits, by 

 practising cleanliness, an ancient, if not a modern virtue ; 

 — by avoiding the deleterious influence of the night air, 

 especially in autumn, when much vegetable matter is in 

 the process of decay ; — by well ventilating our apartments, 

 particularly when the atmosphere is pui-e and salubrious ; 

 — by keeping our cellars free from putrefying vegetables, 

 and other filth ; — by graduating the temperature of our 

 rooms in winter, which should not be suffered to rise 

 above 64° of Fahrenheit ; by avoiding hot sleeping- 

 apartments, in which the temperature often varies, be- 

 tween the hour of going to bed, where fires are kept up, 

 and the hour of rising, when the fires have gone out, — a 

 transition too trying for the most robust constitution ; — 

 by abandoning the use of foot-stoves, which transform 

 our wives and daughters into green-house plants, and 

 render them too sensitive to cold, poison the air they 

 respire, and beguile them into indolent and inactive hab- 

 its, as detrimental to their health as to their useful- 



