Cottage Husbandry and Architecture. 145 



are taught to both sexes ; the endeavours at concealment lead to lying, and 

 to the dread and hatred of all those who have any thing that can be stolen ■ 

 thus crime is rooted in the infant mind, and long before the age of man- 

 hood it ripens into habit. But all the fuel that a labourer can procure in 

 this way is still insufficient for his purposes, and he is only kept from 

 absolute starvation by a parochial supply, or charitable contributions. If, 

 therefore, the labourer could be rendered as independent in his fuel, as he 

 frequently is, and in all cases might very easily be, in his potatoes and 

 vegetables, his comforts would be greatly increased, his moral character 

 raised, and the parish and his neighbours who have property would in every 

 way be gainers. That this fuel may be provided, and that very easily, we 

 can prove beyond contradiction. 



We shall first endeavour to show the proper use and economy of fuel, 

 and in what manner common faggot wood, or the spray and shoots of lig- 

 neous plants of three or four years' growth, may be rendered as effective as 

 billet wood or mineral coal, both in warming the air of a house, and in the 

 operation of cooking. By the use of mineral coal, both these objects may 

 be effected by means of our common open fire-places • but it would not be 

 easy to maintain this temperature by burning spray or faggot wood in the 

 same manner ; it might no doubt be done, but the quantity of fuel con- 

 sumed would be out of all proportion to the benefit obtained. The failure of 

 spray or faggots in heating the air of an apartment, does not arise from defi- 

 ciency of the heat produced, but from the rapidity of combustion, by which 

 great part of the heat is carried directly up the chimney, and such a current of 

 air produced there, that, after the flames of the spray have subsided, the draft 

 is continued in consequence of the heated sides of the chimney, and thus the 

 warm air of the apartment is rapidly exhausted to supply the current. The 

 place of the warm air in the apartment is as readily occupied by cold ah, and 

 the room, which ten minutes before was very hot, is now very cold. A second 

 fire of spray is immediately required, to be attended in its turn by the same 

 results. The same effects, but in a less degree, are produced by fires of 

 billet-wood, roots, or in fact any description of wood. There is one reason 

 for this which deserves to be mentioned, because it is riot very obvious to 

 those who are accustomed to coal fires. Wood fires, and especially the 

 non-resinous kinds, produce very little soot, and scarcely ever a soot which 

 adheres to the chimney. The sides of the chimney being therefore free 

 from what every body knows to be a powerful non-conductor, a coat of 

 soot, they become rapidly and powerfully heated, which consequently acce- 

 lerates the current of air, and continues this current at a rapid rate much 

 longer after the fire has gone out than in the case of a chimney where the 

 fuel is coal. It is clear, therefore, that wood is not a proper fuel for the 

 description of fire-places in use in this country. Burnt in the centre of an 

 immense hall, and its smoke allowed to fill the upper part of this apartment, 

 as in former times, or in logs or thick chumps on the ground, as in the 

 wide open fire-places of America, it is more effective ; but in small raised 

 fire-places, with narrow chimneys, it is very inadequate. 



On the Continent, where the fuel is almost every where wood, and where, 

 from the greater severity of the winter, greater attention is required to 

 heating apartments, the ah* is warmed and cookery effected by distinct 

 processes. The air of the room is warmed by burning small wood, spray, 

 faggots, or wood of any sort in a stove, and cooking is performed on raised 

 hearths by charred wood, or on low hearths by chump wood. Something 

 of the same kind is what we propose to introduce into the cottage system 

 of this country. Heating we would effect by flues in the floor of the kit- 

 chen or living-room, when that floor was on the ground, and could be com- 

 posed of vertical strata of gravel or small stones alternating with smoke 

 flues, the whole being covered with tiles or broad pavement. But when 

 the kitchen or room to be heated was so situated that the flues could not 



Vol. VI. — No. 25. l 



