SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR. 
18 ! 
About the same time, another philosopher undertook to 
show that, by adding to the machinery of the hydraulic 
press, all the power could be gained without the loss of 
speed ; and, of course, by increasing to the necessary 
extent the number of wheels, the hands of a man could be 
enabled to drive the train of a locomotive. It was perpetu- 
al motion over again, and yet it received the certificates of 
men of the highest standing in England. 
Next, and but two years since, came a Cincinnati in- 
ventor, who drove a grist mill at full speed with as many 
wood shavings as he could carry in his hat, and promised 
to take a steamboat of the largest size to New Orleans 
with a bushel or two of coal ; and this, too, was certified 
by men of the highest respectability, who had seen the 
machine in motion. The object of the inventor was, we 
presume, accomplished, for from that day to this we have 
heard no more of him or his engine. 
Since then there have been others ; but the latest scheme 
is now being carried out in New Orleans, by which clay 
is to be made to drive steamboats and locomotives, warm 
houses, and, perhaps, to furnish light. Power-presses 
have, as we are gravely assured, been driven by it, while 
it can be furnished at twenty -five cents a barrel, and must 
therefore, supersede coal as fuel. That it can be profit- 
ably supplied at that price, few will doubt ; and, if any of 
the owners of clay deposits near New Orleans should be 
enabled to make contracts for supplying it as fuel, they 
will certainly be well paid for their land. They had bet- 
ter, as we think, make their contracts early, as the*“ex 
citement” produced by the new and wonderful discovery 
may pass away. 
Of all known substances, clay is among the most re- 
markable, not only for incombustibility, but even for in- 
fusibility., The glass-blower melts«his sand in crucibles 
made of it. The furnace-master uses it for the construc- 
tion of walls within which he melts coal, lime and iron- 
ore, The chemist uses crucibles of clay when he sub- 
jects to the action of the blow- pipe the most refractory 
minerals — and yet this most incombustible substance, that 
can with difficulty be even fused, is by help of some 
hitherto undiscovered process to be resolved into thin air.. 
Then it is to be used in driving engines and emptying the 
pockets of the credulous. 
Clay is, as we are told by one of our chemical friends, 
a peroxide, incapable of further oxidization or combustion 
— but it may be mixed with bitumen, gas, or wood tar 
and then the bituminous matter will burn, but clay 
will not. All our readers know that this earthy matter 
combined with coal remains unburned, and accumulates 
in their grates in the form of ashes; and they know well 
the intensity of the heat to which it has been subjected 
If the carbon contained in the strongest anthracite is in 
capable of burning the few earthy particles combined with 
it, with what reason can we suppose that similar mattet 
can elsewhere be made capable of burning itself, and giv 
ing light, heat and power 1 The thing is an absurdity, 
cooked up for the purpose of accomplishing an object. 
A WOUD ABOTIT CHIMNEYS. 
The London Qxiarterly Reviev) for January contains a 
capital article on the subject of open fire-places, discus 
sing, among other things pertinent to the theme, the sub 
ject of smoking chimneys. As there doubtless are hun- 
dreds, if not thousands, of our numerous readers, who an 
afflicted with this household calamity, we shall be doin^ 
the public a service by giving the pith of the Quarterly'’: 
remarks on this subject: 
Smoke does not, as is popularly supposed, ascend ; 
ebimney because it is lighter than air. Dr. Franklin 
demonstrated, a century ago, that smoke is really heavier 
than air. But the murky cloud of gases, acids and vapor, 
which is called smoke, rises in the chimney, because, 
mixed with the rarefied air which is ascending through 
the same channel. When there is no fire, the draught of 
the chimney is either small, or wanting altogether. 
Hence it is that even good chimneys, if they have been, 
long disused, often smoke for the first five or ten 
minutes after a fire has been kindled, because until the 
air in the chimney becomes rarefied, there is nothing 
to draw the smoke upwards. It follows from this view 
of the origin of the draught in the chimney, that if there 
is an insufficient supply of air, as happens when all the 
doors of a room are closed and the windows listed, that 
the chimneys will smoke, because there being an insuf- 
ficient supply of air to the fire, the coals only smoulder, 
there is no air to be rarefied, the smoke cannot ascend, 
and so the occupants of the apartment suffer. 
It is as necessary, therefore, if we would not have 
smoke to annoy us, to provide plenty of fresh air for the 
fire, as it is to provide a chimney. Dr. Franklin found 
by experiment, that an open fire, in a room of ordinary 
size, required as much air as could be admitted through a 
hole in the wall six inches square. But such a hole, or 
even leaving a door open, produces a draught, and such 
a draught gives person's cold who sit in it. As far back 
as a century and a half ago, a Frenchman, named Gauger, 
invented a fire-place in order to obviate this. He opened 
a hole in the hearth, communicating with a channel which 
passed under the floor, and finally ended at an eperture in 
the wall of the house. Strange to say, this excellent plan 
has never yet been generally adopted. It is only now 
coming first into use in this country, as applied to sup- 
plying hot air furnaces with air ; while comparatively 
few grates are furnished with air in this way, as they 
should be, if those sitting around them wish to avoid cold 
currents on their feet. Open fires are now left to be fed 
by the air which they suck in, so to speak, under the 
doors and through the crevices of the windows ; and 
hence the complaint that a grate-fire roasts the front of the 
person, while the back is freezing. The having sufficient 
air to feed a chimney is, indeed, the principal security 
against a smoky room. There are few smoky chimneys 
which cannot be cured by simply giving them plenty cf 
air. And this rulevapplies as well to stoves, furnaces, or 
other apparatus for heating, as to fires. What we have 
said about preventing smoke, also refers to preventing 
gas from anthracite fires. 
It was an old notion that chimneys ought not to be 
crooked, whereas a slight bend towards the top is bene- 
ficial, for this prevents the sudden descent of wind or rain. 
iVor is the form of the chimney material ; it may be taper- 
ing, or of equal bore ; pyramidal or square; it is only 
necessary that it be constructed so as to offer no consider- 
able i-esistance to the ascending current, for otherwise the 
dot air will be delayed in its ascent, and have time to 
cool. A high chimney always makes the best draught, 
ind hence well-built factories invariably have such chim- 
neys. Dwelling houses do not require such enormously 
high chimneys, but they must be high enough not to be 
over-topped by contiguous buildlings else the wind, strik- 
ng against the superincumbent wall, will be precipitated 
lown the chimney, filling the room with smoke or gas. 
Much of what we have said about smoky chimneys ap- 
plies also to ventilation. The combustion of a fire, 
)r of gas-lights, as well as our breathing, vitiates 
(he air, so that every apartment ought to have an outlet 
I'or carrying off the carbonized and deleterious atmosphere. 
hole, opening into the chimney, just below the ceiling, 
IS the best method of meeting this difficulty. Rooms, 
Heated by properly constructed furnaces, which admit 
fresh air raised to a temperature of 64'^. and supplied with 
