Life of Count Rumford. . 489 



Count Rumford's papers on Heat, either as com- 

 municated to Sir Joseph Banks, as read before the 

 Royal Society and the French Institute, or as put into 

 print under his own eye, will be found to be so con- 

 tinuous and numerous, and to extend over so long a 

 series of years, as to justify the assertion that of all the 

 subjects of his investigation this was his favorite and 

 engrossing theme. His first communication on the 

 subject dates in 1786; his last, in 1812. 



If we turn from the strictly scientific to consider 

 briefly the experimental results of the practical projects 

 and improvements introduced by Count Rumford into 

 household economy and the administration of pub- 

 lic charity, we can trace these results as he himself saw 

 them during the last years of his residence in England. 

 In Germany the people had been used to closed stoves 

 for obtaining warmth and for cooking food. In Eng- 

 land open fireplaces for wood, or open grates for coal, 

 were identified with the habits and the requisitions for 

 comfort and cheer in all houses. English travellers in 

 America to this day Dickens having been among 

 the most emphatic in his expressions regard our 

 stoves and hot-air furnaces as abominations. Count 

 Rumford, in the home of his childhood, and in the 

 houses of his neighbors, had seen the enormous square 

 mass of stone and brick rising from the cellar on an 

 arch, and passing through the centre of the structure, 

 which seemed to be built to surround it, till it pierced 

 the roof, without any division of flues through at least a 

 part of its course. There was probably not a stove in 

 New England when he left it, save only, it may have 

 been, the little tin boxes arranged for warming the feet, 

 which some delicate matrons carried with them, on 



