FARMERS' HOMES. 37 



size as the house they furnish a stable fouudation. Half-cel- 

 lared houses are very apt to be lop-sided. 



One word as to the ventilation of cellars and farm-houses. 

 Farmers generally utilize cellar-room for the storage of pota- 

 toes, turnips, and other root-crops. It would be more for 

 the health of the family if these were stored in the barn- 

 cellar. They are wont to decay more or less before spring, 

 and in their decay they emit the seeds of disease and death. 

 Decay propagates decay, as surely as life propagates life. 

 How the decomposition of vegetable matter should produce 

 decomposition in animals is a little mysterious, but there is no 

 doubt about the fact, and probably more typhoid fever has 

 originated from putridity in cellars than from the decomposi- 

 tion of vegetable matter in some neighboring swamp. The 

 malarial atmosphere from the swamp is greatly diluted with 

 pure air before it reaches the house, and is inhaled in horaceo- 

 pathic doses, but that from the cellar, unless conducted off 

 artificially, permeates the whole dwelling. We have been in 

 some houses where the odor of rotten cabbages and turnips 

 was so perceptible that we felt we were inhaling poison. 



If farmers must stow their roots in the cellars of their 

 houses, they should at least provide some way of escape for 

 the noxious gases there generated. Fortunately this is easily 

 done, if the chimney extends, as it always should, to the cellar- 

 bottom. No ventilating-tube was ever invented equal to a 

 chimney, and no better deodorizers can be found than smoke, 

 soot and creosote. If a register be placed in the chimney 

 near the top of the cellar, the foul air will escape through it, 

 instead of finding vent through the doors and cracks into all 

 parts of the house. Similar registers should connect the 

 kitchen, and indeed every room of the house, with the chim- 

 neys. The problem of thorough ventilation can be solved in 

 no other way, so simply, so cheaply, and so effectually. If 

 there is a sink, or cesspool, or water-closet, that is breeding 

 miasm and death, the simple remedy is to connect it, by means 

 of a pipe or tube, with the chimney. The current of poison- 

 ous gas will, in every case, be found rushing up this tube, and 

 the smoke and soot of the chimney will effectually destroy all 

 its contaminating influences. 



Finally, let the farm-house be built and furnished simply. 



