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of air in the chimney or ventilator, and so produces an up-current, upon precisely the same principle that little bottles made for distributing scent about apartments act. For this reason, it is, as was hinted in the last lecture, important that chimneys should be higher than the surrounding buildings, so that any wind that blows may cause or increase an up-draught in them. In this way not only is smoke prevented from ascending into the rooms, but the amount of air carried through rooms up the chimneys is increased, and the ventilation of the house improved. There being, then, in every house, and frequently in every room, a shaft—whether sufficient or not, we will consider by-and-bye-for the escape of air, it becomes of the first importance for us to consider the means by which air may be admitted into our houses and into our rooms. In summer, and whenever the air is as warm outside the house as inside of it, there is no difficulty about this. We have only to open the windows-wind-doors, remembering

the proverb that "Windows were made to open and doors to shut' -on both sides of the house, and the air is generally changed fast enough, but it is in winter, when the air is colder outside the house than inside, that the difficulties arise, and so in speaking of ventilation I shall always assume that the air outside the house is colder, and therefore heavier, and exercises greater pressure than the air inside it. This being the case, it follows that if we open a window, or make an aperture through a wall into the outer air, or through the wall of a room into a passage, or staircase, in which the air is colder than it is in the room, air will come in. In fact, a room under these conditions may be looked upon as if it had water outside of it, and it is quite apparent that, in such a case, if you bored a hole through the wall into the water on the other side, water would come in, and the air of the room would escape by the chimney. This is precisely what happens with the cold air outside. If no special opening is provided through

which the cold air can come into a room, it enters by such openings as there are; by the apertures between the sashes of the windows, by the-perhaps fortunately-badly fitting doors, crevices in the floors, walls and cupboards, through the walls themselves, as has been shown by Pettenkofer, and sometimes down the chimney. If, then, air will come in through an aperture placed in any position, it becomes necessary to consider where apertures should be placed, and what precautions are necessary with regard to them. Theoretically, the admission of pure air should be at the lowest part of the room, and the extraction of the vitiated air, which is warm, at the upper part of the room; but practically the outer air cannot be admitted without certain precautions at the lower part of the room by mere apertures, as everybody knows who has been accustomed to sit in a room when a draught comes under the door. On the other hand, if an aperture is made into the outer air through a wall at a few feet from the

floor, the air enters in a cold straight current for some distance into the room. If the aperture be higher up, it comes in and falls, just as water would do, on to people's heads, somewhere about the middle of the room. So it is quite clear that certain precautions are necessary in the admission of air so as to prevent draughts. Since we have, or ought to have, windows in all rooms, it will be convenient to consider, first, the ways in which they may be utilized for the admission of air. We cannot simply open a sash window at the top or bottom in cold weather without feeling a draught, but there are several ways in which this difficulty may be got over. The simplest is by placing a board of wood underneath the lower sash, as suggested by Dr. Hinckes Bird, whose original model I have here. This board is sometimes now made with a hinge in the middle, so that it can be got in and out more easily; or the board, instead of being placed under the lower sash, may be placed across, from side to side, in front of the lower

part of the lower sash, so that the lower sash may be opened to a certain height without any air coming in below it. These boards may be covered with green baize, or some other suitable material, so as more perfectly to prevent the entrance of the air at the lower part of the window. In either case, the bars of the sashes at the middle of the window are no longer in contact, and air comes in at the middle of the window, between the two sashes, taking an upward direction, in the form of a fountain, and producing no draught. This shows us the direction in which cold air ought to be admitted into a room-after the fashion of a fountain, in which it can be readily obtained, owing to its greater pressure, and not after the fashion of a waterfall.

This simple plan, which I recommend very strongly for adoption, has two disadvantages, one that nervous people always fancy there is a draught if they see anything like a window open, and the other a much more practical one, but one that is common to most forms of venti

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