156 



SCIENTIFIC NEWi?. 



SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



USEFUL NOTICES RESPECTING VARIOUS 

 OBJECTS. 



1. Method of preventi7ig Wet from being introduced into 

 Rooms hy Windows which shut together like folding 

 Doors. 



Easy remedy ^ considerable inconvenience has been found from the wet 

 to prevent rain penetrating, in rainy and windy weather, through the joints 

 being driven of those windows which have been called French windows, 



into fipsrt- - 



ments through ^"'^i ^''^ now much used. No accuracy of workmanship has 

 the interstices been sufficient to remedy this evil; but, on the contrary, 

 frames. ^^^ closest joints have seemed rather more favourable to tliis 



effect than others less neatly made. Mr. Collinge, Engine- 

 maker, of Lambeth Road, shewed me a very simple and easy 

 remedy. Reasoning on the subject, he considered the close 

 joint as a capillary interstice which would retain a continu- 

 ous mass of water, much more disposed to be driven hori- 

 zontally into the room by the action of the external air than 

 to be conveyed downwards through a longer interval by its 

 mere gravity. He has therefore cjilarged the space for de- 

 scending water by ploughing out a semi-cylindrical groove 

 in each concave angle, from top to bottom. Thig small 

 space, which is about one-tenth of an inch wide, occasions 

 no deformity, and allows the water, as soon as it arrives 

 there, to trickle down to the bottom of the frame, where it is 

 conducted off by a similar concavity along the horizontal 

 frame-work to any place of external discharge which may 

 be made choice of. This easy ajid elfcctual cure for a nui- 

 sance which has destroyed the carpets, and occasioned pud- 

 dles in very elegant rooms, and has apparently resisted all 

 efforts to remedy it by close fitting, will, no doubt, be ac- 

 ceptable to many readers. 



