564 
Abstract Report of Agricultural Discussions. 
sleepers, timbers, and so on, is avoided. He believed that in most 
instances it would be found better to build on the sui'face of the 
soil than to go down 18 inches. In this case there is no necessity to 
go to an extra dejith for the foundation, as is done where there are 
wood floors. 
Having now shown generally the application of these different ma- 
terials, he would next call attention to artificial warming by means 
of open fire-places.* He proposed merely to explain the prin- 
ciple of his invention, not the exact stove applicable for a cottage, 
because at present he had been imable to get one sufiiciently cheap 
for that jjurpose. He had put these stoves in some new cottages for 
the Queen, at a price not less than 2^ guineas ; but he mentioned the 
subject now, because he expected shortly to sujiply a stove with many 
— ^if not quite all — the advantages of the one which he had mentioned, 
at a price suited to a labourer's cottage. In an ordinary fire-place, 
when a fire was bui-ning, it fed itself with the cold air which came in 
through the door or window ; the greater the warmth received by a 
person standing before the fire, the greater was the draught. The se- 
cond defect is that 75 per cent, of the heat from the fuel rushes up the 
chimney, and is of no advantage for warming the room ; the third is 
the evil arising from smoke — that is, from the soot or carbon that is 
in smoke. 
They all knew, from looking at the public buildings, how much 
they were disfigured and injured by the action of smoke. Hence, 
there have been many attempts made to consume smoke in open 
.fire-jjlaces. The most successful of these was that of Dr. Arnott 
— an exceedingly clever contrivance, fully answering its piu-pose 
when a gentleman can attend to it himself in his library ; but, if 
left to the care of a domestic servant, as is very apt to be the case, 
it soon comes to be used as a common fire-place, and then it is a 
very bad description of common fire-place. Now, he must ask them 
to bear in mind that smoke V^as the effect of imperfect combustion. 
There is no smoke in the lower part of the fire, where the greatest 
heat is ; but in the upper part smoke is throvi U off and ascends. He 
allowed it to ascend, but instead of ascending up the chimney, it meets 
with the closed register ; the smoke, thus checked, passes down, and 
comes through the fire ; there the carbon which it contains is »con- 
siuned as fuel, and the residue continues its course, and goes up the 
chimney. The heated air charged with smoke wliich would have gone 
up the chimney now passes round to heat the hollow parts around the 
fii'e-i)lace. These are, as it were, between two fires — the fire on their 
inside, and the smoke on their outside ; and they communicate with 
the cold external air, or tlic cold air of the room, at pleasure. Thus 
there is in the room a large quantity of moderately warm air, not air 
heated by coming in contact with over-heated sm'faccs. Thus, all the 
three defects which he had pointed out as existing in the ordinary fire-- 
places are remedied by his stove. The carbon in the smoke is con- 
sumed without any trouble ; the heat which would have escaped up 
♦ See Illustration No. 7. 
