80 
FIRES WITHOUT SMOKE: 
m m EQUABILITY OF TEMPERATURE. 
In our notice on the subject of fires at pages 13, 14, of the present volume, we 
gave the public some reason to expect a further communication upon a method by 
which we imagine the heating of every description of glazed horticultural erections 
may be economically effected upon scientific principles. 
The smoke nuisance has justly been complained of, but we conceive it is to the 
waste produced that the gardener should trace the subject of his complaint. In 
great cities, and in all confined localities, a vast volume of dusty charcoal propelled 
from chimneys into the atmosphere, must of necessity occasion much filth as well 
as inconvenience ; and it is certain that a mass of smoke, constantly renewed as it 
is in London, Birmingham, and elsewhere, is productive of much distress to 
asthmatic persons and others affected with pulmonary complaints ; but in the 
country, smoke is quickly dispersed, and in some degree tends to promote vegeta- 
ble nutrition. Therefore we do not complain of injury from smoke, and are in- 
clined to believe that if small portions escape through a crevice in the flue, plants 
in general will be thereby rather benefited than otherwise, a fact which is some- 
what corroborated by the healthy condition of many plants in the windows of very 
close apartments imbued with tobacco and coal smoke. 
What we aim at as gardeners, is the effectuation upon scientific, and therefore 
economical principles, of some plans by which the houses may severally or collec- 
tively be heated to any required degree of high or low temperature, without the 
loss of one particle of those inflammable substances which now pass through the 
flues and chimneys. Can this great, this desirable consummation be attained ? 
The hints we now offer are crude, because they have not been acted upon ; they 
are thrown out at a venture, as a stimulus, in this age of infantile, but steadily 
progressing, science ; and we entertain little doubt that, in a very short period, we 
shall hear of the efforts of some spirited individual which will prove the premices 
of a general system of improvement. 
When coal gas was first introduced by Mr. Windsor, it became the object of 
universal fear, and of much vituperation : it has triumphed, and its enemies have 
passed away. To it, or to some agent possessing corresponding or greater energies, 
we look for the accomplishment of the purpose we entertain, and to which we shall 
now shortly allude. 
Every one who has visited towns lighted by gas, must have noticed in one 
situation or other, within the past twelve months, a very ornamental stove 
of a cylindrical form, which, without any appearance of fire, diffuses a general 
warmth, that may be increased to an almost insupportable degree of heat, by the 
