298 Of securing houses and their inhabitants from fire ^ 



POSTSCRIPT. 



Some detached matters will now be touched upon, which have 

 been reserved for this place, because admitting of a more conve- 

 nient notice here, than in the body of my letter. 



I. I begin then by introducing some additional particulars, v>'hich 

 have been promised respecting the plans of Lord Mahon (now Earl 

 Stanhope) and of Mr. D. Hartley, for protecting buildings from fire. 



The statement of what regards Lord Mahon will be borrowed 

 from the London Philosophical Transactions for 1778, Vol. 68, 

 Part 2. 



1. The first object of the communication here to be noticed, con- 

 cerns a wooden house, constructed at Chevening in Kent, for the 

 purpose of performing in it, " in the most natural manner," (as his 

 Lordship expresses it,) his experiments on the subject here in question ; 

 and his Lordship speaks thus, respecting this part of his proceedings. 

 " On the 26th of September, [1777,) I had the honor to repeat 

 some of my experiments before the President and some of the Fel- 

 lows of the Royal Society, the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of the 

 city of London, the committee of city lands, several of the foreign 

 ministers, and a great number of other persons. The first experi- 

 ment was to fill the lower room of the building (which was about 

 twenty six feet long and sixteen wide) full of shavings, and faggots, 

 mixed with combustibles ; and to set them all on fire. The heat was 

 so intense, that the glass of the windows was melted like so much 

 sealing wax, and ran down in drops ; yet the flooring boards of that 

 very room were not burned through, nor was one of the side timbers, 

 floor joists, or ceiling joists, damaged in the smallest degree; and 

 the persons who went into the room immediately over the room filled 

 with fire, did not feel any ill effects from it whatever ; even the floor 

 of that room being perfectly cool during that enormous conflagration 

 immediately underneath." — So much for the wooden house ! (^See 

 p. 892.) 



2. His Lordship, having made, what we may call an extemporary 

 building, for the purpose of having it fairly burned throughout from 

 iop to bottom, proceeds thus in his statement. — " I then caused a 

 kind of wooden building (of full fifty feet in length, and three sto- 

 ries high in the middle), to be erected quite close to the end of the 

 secured wooden house [above mentioned]. I filled and covered this 

 building with above eleven hundred large kiln faggots, and several 



