Hints for Experiment 



36' 



and thus the pipe would act like 

 a syphon, and draw up the water 

 from the bottom of the well or 

 tank, to be heated in the ball, 

 and return it to the top of the 

 well or tank, there to give out 

 its heat to the earth above. If, 

 instead of a series of wells in a 

 garden, we imagine the whole 

 garden to be supported over 

 one large tank of water, it is 

 easy to conceive that the tem- 

 perature of the surface soil 

 would be so much increased as 

 not to be frozen even in winter, 

 and consequently the climate of 

 the garden, both in winter and 

 summer, would be very much 

 improved as far as heat is con- 

 cerned. A lake or a canal, in a gentleman's park, so heated by nu- 

 merous concentrators, would certainly have some effect on the adjoining 

 soil and trees. If all the lakes, ponds, canals, wells, and tanks in England 

 werejjso heated, the climate of the country would surely undergo some 

 change; and the next idea that occurs is, what would be the effect on the 

 climate of the whole world, supposing it were practicable for all its seas, 

 rivers, and lakes to be covered with solar concentrators ? — It must not be 

 forgotten that nature, in operating upon the temperature of the world, next 

 to the sun, employs chiefly the heat and cold of the water of the ocean. 

 The same sort of circulation takes place between the seas of cold countries 

 and the seas of hot countries which takes place in the upper and lower 

 pipes of a hot-house heated in the Elcot manner ; and islands in cold cli- 

 mates, such as Britain, are kept warmer than they otherwise would be, by 

 being surrounded by water which has been heated in great part in a warmer 

 region, in the same way as hot-houses are kept warm in the night by water 

 which has been heated in the day. 



Water in many cases might be heated by pipes communicating with a kitchen 

 fire. — We have elsewhere suggested that baths, which might serve also as 

 reservoirs for heating rooms or as substitutes for stoves, might be heated in 

 this way in any part of a dwelling-house, and either above or below the 

 level of the fire. No plan equally effectual could be devised for trans- 

 ferring part of the heat generated by the kitchen fire to other parts of the 

 house, or to adjoining apartments, green-houses, shops, or manufactories. 

 An artist could not heat his apartments by an equally unobjectionable 

 mode. In this way, water at a great distance from the fire might even 

 be boiled ; and hence this improvement might be rendered available in 

 cooking, brewing, and washing, but especially in the drying room of a 

 laundry. 



Water might be heated by the gas lamps of shops, by simply having a 

 double funnel over the flame (fig. 131.), the vacuity filled with water, and 

 communicating with the reservoir to be heated by a going and returning 

 pipe. No house in London having a shop, need require any fire-places or 

 chimneys but for the purposes of cookery ; and, indeed, were gas only a 

 little cheaper, fires in large cities might be dispensed with altogether. It 

 would be easy to render gas an elegant substitute for a fire in a drawing- 

 room ; while the heat, as it passed up the chimney, might be communicated 

 to pipes connected with reservoirs of water for heating other parts of the 



