brickwork, and so into the chimney. The greatest offenders are the ordinary register grates. Iron all over, back, and sides, and roof, they are usually set in a chamber open above to the chimney, and imperfectly filled in, or not filled in at all, with brickwork. The heat escapes through the iron to this chamber, and thence is lost. Another fault is that the "register-opening," in other words the "throat of the chimney," being immediately above the coal, submits the burning fuel to the full concentrated force of the current to the chimney, converting the fire into a miniature blast-furnace. On this point Rumford says: "But there are, I am told, persons in this country who are so fond of seeing what is called a great roaring fire, that even with its attendant inconveniences, of roasting and freezing opposite sides of the body at the same time, they prefer it to the genial and equable warmth which a smaller fire, properly managed, may be made to produce, even in an open-chimney fireplace."
The second result of faulty construction in fireplaces is "undue production of smoke and soot." Smoke and soot imply imperfect combustion, and to this two defects in a fire mainly contribute, one, too rapid a draught through the fire which hurries away and chills below burning-point the gas rising from the heated fuel. The other defect is too cold a fire, i. e., too small a body of heat in and around the fuel, so that the temperature of the gases is not raised to a point at which they will burn. On the smoke question Rumford waxes eloquent: "The enormous waste of fuel in London may be estimated by the vast dark cloud which continually hangs over this great metropolis, and frequently overshadows the whole country, far and wide; for this dense cloud is certainly composed almost entirely of unconsumed coal, which, having stolen wings from the innumerable fires of this great city, has escaped by the chimneys, and continues to sail about in the air till, having lost the heat which gave it volatility, it falls in a dry shower of extremely fine black dust to the ground, obscuring the atmosphere in its descent, and frequently changing the brightest day into more than Egyptian darkness."
A few years ago the prevalence of unusually dense fogs roused the metropolitan public to a sense of this great evil. The Smoke Abatement Society was formed, and under its auspices exhibitions of smoke-consuming apparatus and improved fireplaces were held in London and Manchester. Beyond the fact that certain grates were pronounced to be good in point of economy, and moderate in the production of smoke, and that the public has been led to take an interest in and inquire into the relative value and economy of various patent fireplaces, there has been but little advance in the education of the public in the principles which lie at the root of the whole question.
A third result of bad construction is the "production of cinders." With good coal, cinders are inexcusable. They are unconsumed carbon—coke—and imply a faulty fireplace. If thrown into the ash-pit,
