.VOL. LXI.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 97 



' The bricks in the royal apartments are 2 feet square, and 4 inches thick. 

 They cost near 100 crowns a-piece; and are so beautiful, good, and solid, that 

 you can have no conception* of any such thing beyond the seas. They are grey; 

 but this is owing to the Chinese manner of baking their bricks and tiles, which 

 comes nearer to that of the ancients than ours. These bricks when coloured 

 and glazed appear as fine as marble. 



When a kang is thoroughly heated, very little fire is required to keep it warm, 

 though here the thermometer is almost all the winter at 9, 10, and even 12 or 

 13 degrees below the freezing point, in Reaumur's thermometer; and though all 

 the rooms are on the ground floor, and have nothing but windows, and those 

 paper windows, all over the front, which is commonly to the south, the warmth 

 of the kang is sufficient to keep up their temperature at 7 or 8 degrees above 

 frost, with very little fire constantly kept up. It seldom rises to more than 4 or 

 5 degrees in the emperor's apartments, owing to the double row of bricks; but 

 the warmth is very gentle and very penetrating. 



As a kang is heated by a furnace, any kind of fuel will do, viz. wood, char- 

 coal, sea coal, furze, &c. The Chinese make the most of every thing. In the 

 palace they bum nothing but wood, or a kind of coal which neither smokes nor 

 smells, and burns like tinder. The generality of people burn sea coal: the poor 

 in the country make use of furze, straw, cow dung, &c. A great saving may 

 accrue from the following observation : the Chinese, to save coals, pound them 

 to the size of coarse gravel, and mix them with one third, or even an equal 

 quantity, of gootl yellow clay. This mixture being well kneaden, they make 

 it up into bricks, which strike a greater heat than wood, and come incomparably 

 cheaper. The sea coal thus tempered is far less offensive; and besides, the 

 Chinese, in order to draw off the noisome vapours of the air, constantly heated 

 by the coal fire, always keep bowls of water in the rooms, and renew them now 

 and then. The gold fishes that are kept in these bowls are both an ornament 

 and amusement. In the palace, the emperor's apartments are decorated with 

 flower pots, and little orange trees, &c. The Chinese philosophers pretend that* 

 this is the best way to sweeten the air, and absorb the fiery particles dispersed in 

 it. They likewise leave 2 panes open night and day at the top of each window, 

 to renew the air, which they think is too much rarefied by the heat. 



The kang is attended with many advantages and conveniencies. 1°. The rich 

 and great are not exposed to the troublesome attendance on a fire in the chimney, 

 and enjoy all its benefits. 2°. The poor use all sorts of fuel without any other 

 expence than what the kitchen requires, and have the comfort of sitting warm 

 by day, and lying warm by night. The fire in the furnace serves to dress vic- 

 tuals, and to heat the stove. The poor go still further, they enclose within the 

 brick work of the kang a vessel, either of- copper tinned, or of iron, which 



VOL. XIII. O 



