XXIV 
INTRODUCTION. 
pronounces instantly a verdict of Not Proven.” Mr. 
Ellis seems scarcely aware of tlie extreme difficulty 
of maintaining any essential difference between tbe com- 
ponent parts of atmospheric air on the internal or external 
side of any given partition. He seems scarcely aware that 
Mr. Ward’s establishment — the success of which he justly 
considers beyond dispute — communicates with the sur- 
rounding mmky and foul atmosphere by means of a glass 
door, of the usual construction — a door opened by every 
visitor on entering this paradise — 
“ Exiguus spatio, variis sed fertilis herbis : ” * 
And again by every visitor on returning ; and that these 
openings are much too frequent to allow the possibility of 
maintaining any difference in the proportions of the gases 
composing the internal and external air, even supposing 
that the air would not so far elude Mr. Ward’s care, were the 
door constantly shut, as not to insinuate itself through the 
broken panes and other apertures which every glass house 
must possess. Before assigning the excess of sulphurous 
and muriatic-acid gases as the deleterious property of the 
atmosphere obviated by Mr. Ward’s plan, Mr. Ellis should 
have shown us that this excess was so obviated. He should 
have shown us that the deleterious gases did not exist 
within ; he should have tested the interior, and given us 
the result ; he should have told us by what mystic charac- 
ter engraved on the threshold these gases were scared 
away ; in short, he should have done what he has not done 
^ This line, from the Moretiim of Virgil, is over the door. 
