Part 20
Few sights are more melancholy than the contemplation of a party of English fire-worshipers seated in a semicircle round the family fetish on a keen frosty day. They huddle together, roast their knees, and grill their faces, in order to escape the chilling blast that is brought in from all the chinks of leaky doors and windows by the very agent they employ, at so much cost, for the purpose of keeping the cold away. The bigger the fire the greater the draught, the hotter their faces the colder their backs, the greater the consumption of coal the more abundant the crop of chilblains, rheumatism, catarrh, and other well-deserved miseries.
The most ridiculous element of such an exhibition is the complacent self-delusion of the victims. They believe that their idol bestows upon them an amount of comfort unknown to other people, that it affords the most perfect and salubrious ventilation, and, above all, that it is a “cheerful” institution. The “cheerfulness” is, perhaps, the broadest part of the whole caricature, especially when we consider that, according to this theory of the cheerfulness of fire-gazing, the 16-inch idiot must be the most cheerful of all human beings.
The notion that our common fireplaces and chimneys afford an efficient means of ventilation, is almost too absurd for serious discussion. Everybody who has thought at all on the subject is aware that in cold weather the exhalations of the skin and lungs, the products of gas-burning, etc., are so much heated when given off that they rise to the upper part of the room (especially if any cold outer air is admitted), and should be removed from there before they cool again and descend. Now, our fireplace openings are just where they ought _not_ to be for ventilation; they are at the lower part of the room, and thus their action consists in creating a current of cold air or “draught” from doors and windows, which cold current at once descends, and then runs along the floor, chilling our toes and provoking chilblains.
This cold fresh air having done its worst in the way of making us uncomfortable, passes directly up the chimney without doing us any service for purposes of respiration. Our mouths are usually above the level of the chimney opening, and thus we only breathe the vitiated atmosphere which it fails to remove.
Not only does the fire-opening fail to purify the air we breathe, it actually prevents the leakage of the lower part of the windows and doors from assisting in the removal of the upper stratum of vitiated air, for the strong up-draught of the chimney causes these openings to be fully occupied by an inflowing current of cold air, which at once descends, and then proceeds, as before stated, to the chimney. If the leakage is insufficient to supply the necessary amount of chilblain-making and bronchitis-producing draught, it has to enter by way of the chimney-pot in the form of occasional spasms of down-draught, accompanied by gusts of choking and blackening smoke. It is a fact not generally known, that smoky chimneys are especial English institutions, one of the peculiar manifestations of our very superior domestic comfortableness.
It is true that, in some of our rooms, an Arnott’s ventilator opens into the upper part of the chimney, but this was intended by Dr. Arnott as an adjunct to his modification of the German stove, and such ventilator can only act efficiently where a stove is used. The pressure required to fairly open it can only be regularly obtained when the chimney is closed below, or its lower opening is limited to that of a stovepipe.
The mention of a German stove has upon an English fire-worshiper a similar effect to the sight of water upon a mad dog. Again and again, when I have spoken of the necessity of reforming our fireplaces, the first reply elicited has been, “What, would you have us use German stoves?” In every case where I have inquired of the exclaimer, “What sort of a thing is a German stove?” the answer has proved that the exclamation was but a manifestation of blind prejudice based upon total ignorance. These people who are so much shocked at the notion of introducing “German stoves” have no idea of the construction of the stoves which deservedly bear this title. Their notion of a German stove is one of those wretched iron boxes of purely English invention known to ironmongers as “shop stoves.” These things get red hot, their red-hot surface frizzles the dust particles that float in the atmosphere and perfume the apartment accordingly. This, however disagreeable, is not very mischievous, perhaps the reverse, as many of these dust particles, which are revealed by a sunbeam, are composed of organic matter which, as Dr. Tyndall argues, may be carriers of infection. If we must inhale such things, it is better that we should breathe them cooked than take them raw.
The true cause of the headaches and other mischief which such stoves unquestionably induce is very little understood in this country. It has been falsely attributed to over-drying of the atmosphere, and accordingly evaporating pans and other contrivances have been attached to such stoves, but with little or no advantage. Other explanations are given, but the true one is that iron _when red hot is permeable by carbonic oxide_. This was proved by the researches of Professor Graham, who showed that this gas not only _can_ pass through red-hot iron with singular facility, but actually _does_ so whenever there is atmospheric air on one side and carbonic oxide on the other.
For the benefit of my non-chemical readers, I may explain that when any of our ordinary fuel is burned, there are two products of carbon combustion, one the result of complete combustion, the other of semi-combustion—carbonic acid and carbonic oxide—the former, though suffocating when breathed alone or in large proportion, is not otherwise poisonous, and has no disagreeable odor; it is in fact rather agreeable in small quantities, being the material of champagne bubbles and of those of other effervescing drinks. Carbonic oxide, the product of semi-combustion, is quite different. Breathed only in small quantities, it acts as a direct poison, producing peculiarly oppressive headaches. Besides this, it has a disagreeable odor. It thus resembles many other products of imperfect combustion, such as those which are familiar to everybody who has ever blown out a tallow candle, and left the red wick to its own devices.
On this account alone any kind of iron stove capable of becoming red-hot should be utterly condemned. If Englishmen did their traveling in North Europe in the winter, their self-conceit respecting the comfort of English houses would be cruelly lacerated, and none such would perpetrate the absurdity of applying the name of “German stove” to the iron fire-pots that are sold as stoves by English ironmongers.
As the Germans use so great a variety of stoves, it is scarcely correct to apply the title of German to any kind of stove, unless we limit ourselves to North Germany. There, and in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Russia, the construction of stoves becomes a specialty. The Russian stove is perhaps the most instructive to us, as it affords the greatest contrast to our barbarous device of a hole in the wall into which fuel is shoveled, and allowed to expend nine-tenths of its energies in heating the clouds, while only the residual ten per cent does anything towards warming the room. With the thermometer outside below zero, a house in Moscow or St. Petersburg is kept incomparably more warm and comfortable, and is _better_ ventilated (though, perhaps, not so _much_ ventilated) than a corresponding class of house in England, where the outside temperature is 20 or 30 degrees higher, and this with a consumption of about one-fourth of the fuel which is required for the production of British bronchitis.
This is done by, first of all, sacrificing the idiotic recreation of fire-gazing, then by admitting no air into the chimney but that which is used for the combustion of the fuel; thirdly, by sending as little as possible of the heat up the chimney; fourthly, by storing the heat obtained from the fuel in a suitable reservoir, and then allowing it gradually and steadily to radiate into the apartment from a large but not overheated surface.
The Russian stove by which these conditions are fulfilled is usually an ornamental, often a highly artistic, handsome article of furniture, made of fire-resisting porcelain, glazed and otherwise decorated outside. Internally it is divided by thick fire-clay walls into several upright chambers or flues, usually six. Some dry firewood is lighted in a suitable fireplace, and is supplied with only sufficient air to effect combustion, all of which enters below and passes fairly through the fuel. The products of combustion being thus undiluted with unnecessary cold air, are very highly heated, and in this state pass up compartment or flue No. 1; they are then deflected, and pass down No. 2; then up No. 3, then down No. 4, then up No. 5, then down No. 6. At the end of this long journey they have given up most of their heat to the 24 heat-absorbing surfaces of the fire-clay walls of the six flues.
When the interior of the stove is thus sufficiently heated, the fire-door and the communication with the chimney are closed, and the fire is at once extinguished, having now done its day’s work; the interior of the stove has bottled up its calorific force, and holds it ready for emission into the apartment. This is effected by the natural properties of the walls of the earthenware reservoir. They are bad conductors and good radiators. The heat slowly passes through to the outside of the stove, is radiated into the apartment from a large and moderately-heated surface, which affords a genial and well-diffused temperature throughout.
There is no scorching in one little red-hot hole, or corner, or box, and freezing in the other parts of the room. There are no draughts, as the chimney is quite closed as soon as the heat reservoir is supplied. If one of these heat reservoirs is placed in the hall, where it may form a noble ornament and can easily communicate with an underground flue, it warms every part of the house, and enables the Russian to enjoy a luxurious temperate climate indoors in spite of arctic winter outside.
In a house thus warmed and free from draughts or blasts of cold air, ventilation becomes the simplest of problems. Nothing more is required than to provide an inlet and outlet in suitable places, and of suitable dimensions, when the difference between the specific gravity of the cold air without and warm air within does all the rest. Nothing is easier to arrange than to cause all the entering air to be warmed on its way by the hall stove, and to regulate the supply which each apartment shall receive from this general or main stream by adjusting its own upper outlet. In our English houses, with open chimneys, all such systematic, scientific ventilation is impossible, on account of the dominating, interfering, useless, and comfort-destroying currents produced by these wasteful air-shafts.
I should add that the Russian porcelain reservoirs may be constructed for a heat supply of a few hours or for a whole day, and I need say nothing further in refutation of the common British prejudice which confounds so admirable and truly scientific a contrivance with the iron fire-pot above referred to.
There is another kind of stove, which, for the sake of distinction, I may call Scandinavian, as it is commonly used in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, besides some parts of North Germany. This is a tall, hollow iron pillar, of rectangular section, varying from three to six feet in width, and rising half-way to the ceiling of the room, and sometimes higher. A fire is lighted at the lower part, and the products of combustion, in their way upwards, meet with horizontal iron plates, which deflect them first to the right, then to the left, and thus compel them to make a long serpentine journey before they reach the chimney. By this means they give off their heat to the large surface of iron plate, and enter the chimney at a comparatively low temperature. The heat is radiated into the apartment from the large metal surface, no part of which approaches a red-heat. A further economy is commonly effected by placing this iron pillar in the wall separating two rooms, so that one of its faces is in each room. Thus two rooms are heated by one fire. One of these may be the kitchen, and the same fire that prepares the food may be used to warm the dining-room. The fire-worshiper is of course deprived of his “cheerful” occupation of staring at the coals, and he also loses his playthings, as neither poker, tongs, nor coal-scuttle are included in the furniture of an apartment thus heated. People differently constituted consider that an escape from the dust, dirt, and clatter of these is a decided advantage.
Of course these stoves of our northern neighbors are costly—may be very costly when highly ornamental. The stove of a Norwegian “bonder,” or peasant proprietor, costs nearly half as much as the two-roomed wooden house in which it is erected, but the saving it effects renders it a good investment. It would cost 100_l._ or 200_l._ to fit up an English mansion with suitable porcelain stoves of the Russian pattern, but a saving of 20_l._ a year in fuel would yield a good return as regards mere cost, while the gain in comfort and healthfulness would be so great that, once enjoyed and understood, such outlay would be willingly made by all who could afford it, even if no money saving were effected.
Only last week I was discussing this question in a railway carriage, where one of my fellow-passengers was an intelligent Holsteiner. He confirmed the heresy by which I had shocked the others, in exulting in the high price of coal, and wishing it to continue. He told us that when wood was abundant in his country, fuel was used as barbarously, as wastefully, and as inefficiently as it now is here, but that the deforesting of the land, and the great cost of fuel, forced upon them a radical reform, the result of which is that they now have their houses better warmed, and at a less cost than when fuel was obtainable at one fourth of its present cost.
Such will be the case with us also if we can but maintain the present coal famine during one or two more winters, especially if we should have the further advantage of some very severe weather in the meantime. Hence the cruel wishes above expressed. The coal famine would scarcely be necessary if we had Russian winters, for in such case our houses, instead of being as they are, merely the most uncomfortable in North Europe, would be quite uninhabitable. With our mild winters we require the utmost severity of fuel prices to civilize our warming and ventilating devices.
“BAILY’S BEADS.”
TO THE EDITOR OF THE _Times_.
SIR,—The curious breaking up of the thin annular rim of the sun which is uncovered just before and just after totality, or which surrounds the moon during an annular eclipse, has been but occasionally observed, and some scepticism as to the accuracy of Baily’s observations has lately arisen. Having attempted an explanation of the “beads,” I have looked with much interest for the reports of the eclipse of 1870, for, if I am right, they ought to have been well seen on this occasion. This has been the case. We are informed that both Lord Lindsay and the Rev. S. J. Perry have observed them, and that Lord Lindsay has set aside all doubts respecting their reality by securing a photographic record of their appearance.
My explanation is that they are simply sun-spots seen in profile—spots just caught in the fact of turning the sun’s edge. All observers are now agreed as to the soundness of Galileo’s original description of the spots—that they are huge cavities, great rifts of the luminous surface of the sun, many thousands of miles in diameter, and probably some thousand miles deep. Let us suppose the case of a spot—say, 2,000 miles deep and 10,000 miles across (Sir W. Herschel has measured spots of 50,000 miles diameter). When such a spot in the course of the sun’s rotation reaches that part which forms the visible edge of the sun, it must, if rendered visible, be seen as a notch; but what will be the depth of such a notch? Only about 1-430th of the sun’s diameter. But the apparent depth would be much less as the edge or rim of the spot next to the observer would cut off more or less of its actually visible depth, this amount depending upon the lateral or east and west diameter of the spot and its position at the time of observation.
Thus, the visible depth of such a notch would rarely exceed one thousandth of the sun’s apparent diameter, or might be much less. The sun being globular, the edge which is visible to us is but our horizon of his fiery ocean, which we see athwart the intervening surface as it gradually bends away from our view. So small an indent upon this edge would, under ordinary circumstances of observation, be rendered quite invisible by the irradiation of the vast globular surface of the glaring photosphere, upon which it would visually encroach.
If, however, this body of glare could be screened off, and only a line of the sun’s edge, less than one thousandth of his diameter, remain visible, the notch would appear as a distinct break in this curved line of light. If a group of spots, or a great irregular spot with several umbræ, were at such a time situated upon the sun’s edge, the appearance of a series of such notches or breaks leaving intermediate detachments of the visible ring of the photosphere would be the necessary result, and thus would be presented exactly the appearance described as “Baily’s beads.”
I have been led to anticipate a display of these beads during the late eclipse by the fact that some days preceding it a fine group of spots—visible to the naked eye through a London fog—were traveling towards the eastern edge of the sun, and should have reached the limb at about the time of the eclipse. The beads were observed by the Rev. S. J. Perry just where I expected them to appear. I have not yet learnt on which side of the sun they were observed and photographed by Lord Lindsay.
Baily’s first observation of the beads was made during the annular eclipse of May 15, 1836. That year, like 1870, was remarkable for a great display of sun-spots. As in 1870, they were then visible to the naked eye. I well remember my own boyish excitement when, a few weeks before the eclipse of 1836, I discovered a spot upon the reddened face of the setting sun—a thing I had read about, and supposed that only great astronomers were privileged to see. The richness of this sun-spot period is strongly impressed on my memory by the fact that I continued painfully watching the dazzling sun, literally “watching and weeping,” up to the Sunday of the eclipse, on which day also I saw a large spot through my bit of smoked glass.
The previous records of these appearances of fracture of the thin line of light are those of Halley, in his memoir on the total eclipse of 1715, and Maclauren’s on that of 1737. Both of these correspond to great spot periods; the intervals between 1715, 1737, 1836, and 1870 are all divisible by eleven. The observed period of sun-spot occurrence is eleven years and a small fraction.
I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of Lord Lindsay’s long-exposure photographs of the corona, for if they represent the varying degrees of splendor of this solar appendage, the explanations offered in Chapter xii. of my essay on “The Fuel of the Sun” will be very severely tested by them.
Yours respectfully, W. MATTIEU WILLIAMS.
Woodside Green, Croydon, January 4, 1871.
THE COLORING OF GREEN TEA.
The following is a copy of my report to the _Grocer_ on a sample of the ingredients actually used by the Chinese for coloring of tea, which sample was sent to the _Grocer_ office by a reliable correspondent at Shanghai (November, 1873). I reprint it because the subject has a general interest and is commonly misunderstood:
I have examined the blue and the yellowish-white powders received from the office, and find that the blue is not indigo, as your Shanghai correspondent very naturally supposes, but is an ordinary commercial sample of Prussian blue. It is not so bright as some of our English samples, and by mere casual observation may easily be mistaken for indigo. Prussian blue is a well-known compound of iron, cyanogen, and potassium. Commercial samples usually contain a little clayey or other earthy impurities, which is the case with this Chinese sample. There are two kinds of Prussian blue—the insoluble, and the basic or soluble. The Chinese sample is insoluble.
This is important, seeing that we do not eat our tea-leaves, but merely drink an infusion of them; and thus even the very small quantity which faces the tea-leaf remains with the spent leaves, and is not swallowed by the tea-drinker, who therefore need have no fear of being poisoned by this ornamental adulterant.
Its insolubility is obvious, from the fact that green tea does not give a blue infusion, which would be the case if the Prussian blue were dissolved.
There are some curious facts bearing on this subject and connected with the history of the manufacture of Prussian blue. Messrs. Bramwell, of Newcastle-on-Tyne, who may be called the fathers of this branch of industry, established their works about a century ago. It was first sold at two guineas per lb.; in 1815 it had fallen to 10_s._ 6_d._, in 1820 to 2_s._ 6_d._, then down to 1_s._ 9_d._ in 1850. I see by the Price Current of the _Oil Trade Review_ that the price has recently been somewhat higher.
In the early days of the trade a large portion of Messrs. Bramwell’s produce was exported to China. The Chinese then appear to have been the best customers of the British manufacturers of this article. Presently, however, the Chinese demand entirely ceased, and it was discovered that a common Chinese sailor, who had learned something of the importation of this pigment to his native country, came to England in an East Indiaman, visited, or more probably obtained employment at a Prussian blue manufactory, learned the process, and, on his return to China, started there a manufactury of his own, which was so successful that in a short time the whole of the Chinese demand was supplied by native manufacture; and thus ended our export trade. Those who think the Chinese are an unteachable and unimprovable people may reflect on this little history.
The yellowish powder is precisely what your Shanghai correspondent supposes. It is steatite, or “soapstone.” This name is very deceptive, and coupled with the greasy or unctuous feel of the substance, naturally leads to the supposition that it is really as it appears, an oleaginous substance. This, however, is not the case. It is a compound of silicia, magnesia, and water, with which are sometimes associated a little clay and oxide of iron. Like most magnesian minerals, it has a curiously smooth or slippery surface, and hence its name. It nearly resembles meerschaum, the smoothness of which all smokers understand.
When soapstone is powdered and rubbed over a moderately rough surface, it adheres, and forms a shining film; just as another unctuous mineral, graphite (the “black-lead” of the housemaid), covers and polishes ironwork. On this account, soapstone is used in some lubricating compounds, for giving the finishing polish to enameled cards, and for other similar purposes.