294 Of securing houses and their inhabitants fiom Jire, 



4. Some have proposed to steep building timber in certain liquids, 

 in order to render it incombustible as to its exterior ; but nothing hav- 

 ing been sufficiently made known to the public, as to the efficacy of 

 such a project, we may pass over this suggestion. — The same may 

 be said of chemical or other materials thrown among flames, in order 

 to extinguish them j particularly as articles of this kind cannot inter- 

 fere with any thing proposed in this letter. — As to iron beams, ^c. 

 placed horizontally in buildings, however efficacious they may be 

 supposed to be for attaining the general object here in question, yet 

 they do not seem hitherto to have attracted public notice sufficiently 

 to make it necessary to speak farther concerning them in this place. 



Here, then, the enumeration of the particulars to be proposed, as 

 to the mode of constructing buildings, so as to prevent their taking 

 fire, or o{ extinguishing fire when it seizes thera, will be concluded 

 for the present. 



My Miscellaneous Remarks are now to follow, — and they wilt 

 chiefly regard different modes of introducing warmth into large build- 

 ings, or of excluding cold from them, as well as other particulars of 

 a like description. 



1. It is important, in a country subject to severe winters, to have 

 double doors at each of the entries into a large building, with a cer- 

 tain space between these doors, by the aid of which the passages and 

 stair-cases within the building may easily remain filled with warm air, 

 which can, by various methods, be thrown into them. 



2. Double windows may be equally useful during the winter, in a 

 large portion of the United States. This and the preceding expe- 

 dient are not named here because unknown in the United States, 

 but because they are too generally neglected. Yet the utility of 

 double windows, in particular, can be forgotten by none who have 

 visited the north eastern parts of Europe in winter. — Caulking the 

 edges of window-sashes in winter, is another precaution against se- 

 vere cold, not to be despised. — And again, in countries like the Uni- 

 ted States, where habit so often leads to a superfluity of windows in 

 some of their buildings, the closing of such windows as can be dis- 

 pensed with during the winter months, (by shutters or other suitable 

 means,) is a proceeding not to be overlooked. 



3. Since smoky rooms are still disgracefully common in the Uni- 

 ted States, an anecdote as to one course which may be taken for 

 curing them shall here be given. A celebrated naturalist in this 



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