Chapter 5

The oven with which this success has been achieved is one of two in the bakehouse of Mr. Loeber, of 161 Blackfriars Road. It measures 7 feet by 6 feet internally; being what is technically termed a 6 bushel oven. The alterations made by Mr. Booer consist in the first place in the removal of the flooring tiles, and the laying down of a new bottom, under which run a number of flues radiating from the side furnace. The throat of the furnace, where it enters the angle of the oven, is bricked up, and eight pieces of ¾-inch gun-barrel tubing project above this dwarf wall, and radiate fan-shaped under the dome of the roof. These are the gas-burners, which are supplied from a 1½-inch pipe led into the old furnace. The same pipe supplies the similar burners which are inserted in the flues under the oven bottom. This is really all the plant required. It should be remarked that these bottom flues are carried to different points of the side walls, and the products of combustion are allowed to rise upward into the oven through gaps left for the purpose. A supplementary supply of heated air is provided to help the combustion of the gas in these flues, which would otherwise be languid. When the gas is turned on from the main cock in the furnace either to the top or the bottom set of burners, a long match is used to light them from the same point. This is effected without risk of firing back, by the adoption of a specially constructed atmospheric nipple and shield, the pattern of which is registered. The flame from the top burners unites in a sheet of fire, which spreads out all over the crown of the oven, at the same time that the burners below are doing their work, and the products of combustion flow together through the oven to the chimney, which is the same that was used for coal. At first, as might be expected, there was considerable difficulty in finding the most suitable position of the chimney damper, aggravated in this case by the fact that the other oven worked with a coal fire into the same shaft. Finally, however, the two flues were disconnected with the happiest results. During the past fortnight the oven has been in regular use, and the bread has been sold over the counter in the ordinary course of trade. Two and three batches of bread have been baked in one day in this oven; the economy of its use, of course, increasing with the number of loaves turned out. As a rule the gas is lighted for about an hour before the oven is wanted, and about 250 cubic feet are used. Then the cocks are shut and the oven is allowed to stand closed up for ten minutes, in which time it ventilates itself, and the heat spreads over it. Then the batch is set, and the baking occupies from an hour to an hour and a half, according to the different classes of loaves. Two batches are baked with a consumption of about 620 cubic feet of gas; costing, at 2s. 10d. per 1000 cubic feet, just 11d. each batch for fuel. This cannot be considered costly. But the system possesses many other advantages. In the first place, it is much more cleanly than coal; for the oven never requires wiping out, which is usually done with a bundle of old rope called a "scuffle" and the operation is attended with a most unpleasant odor. Then there is no smoke--a great advantage from the point of view of the Smoke Abatement Institution. More to the purpose of the journeyman baker, however, is the fact that there is no stoking to be done, and he can therefore take his repose at night without having to attend to the furnace. Besides this the master has the satisfaction of knowing that the oven will always be hot enough if he simply attends to the time of lighting the gas--a consideration of no small moment. It is no mean testimony to the reality of Mr. Booer's success that Mr. Loeber, having seen his difficulties and troubles from the beginning, and marked how they have been overcome, is content to acknowledge that even this first example is capable of turning out bread in a condition to be sold over the counter. There is a good opening in this direction, for there are 6,000 bakeries in London alone, to every one of which Mr. Booer's system might be applied with advantage to the tradesman and his customers. And what may be done with gas at about 3s. per 1,000 cubic feet may certainly be done to still greater advantage in many towns where the price is lower. Mr. Booer has entered upon his work in a proper spirit. He has begun at the beginning, with the necessities of the baker; and has gone plodding on quietly, until he has achieved a noteworthy success. It may be hoped he will receive the reward which his perseverance merits.--_Jour. of Gas Lighting_.

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CAPTAIN MATTHEW WEBB.

Who was drowned on July 24 in attempting to swim through the whirlpool and rapids at the foot of the Falls of Niagara, was born at Irongate, near Dawley, in Shropshire, January 18, 1848. He was 5 feet 8 inches in height, measured 43 inches round the chest, and weighed about 14½ stone. He learnt to swim when about seven years old, and was trained as a sailor on board the Conway training-ship in the Mersey, where he saved the life of a fellow seaman. In 1870 he dived under his ship in the Suez Canal and cleared a foul hawser; and, on April 23, 1873, when serving on board the Cunard steamer Russia, he jumped overboard to save the life of a hand who had fallen from aloft, but failed, and it was an hour before he was picked up almost exhausted. For this he received a gold and other medals. He became captain of a merchant ship, but soon after he relinquished the sea and devoted himself to the sport of swimming.

At long distance swimming in salt water he was _facile princeps_, but he did not show to such advantage in fresh water. In June, 1874, he swam from Dover to the North-East Varne Buoy, a distance of 11 statute miles. On July 3, 1875, he swam from Blackwall Pier to Gravesend Town Pier, nearly 18 statute miles, in 4 hours 52 minutes. On the 19th of the same month he swam from Dover to Ramsgate, 19¼ statute miles, in 8 hours 45 minutes. On August 12, 1875, he tried to cross from England to France, and although he failed, owing to the heavy sea, he compassed the distance from Dover to the South Sand Head, 15½ statute miles, in 6 hours 48 minutes. On the 24th of the same month he made another attempt, which rendered his name famous all over the English-speaking world. Starting from Dover, he reached the French coast at Calais, after being immersed in the water for 21 hours 44 minutes. He had swum over 39 miles, or, according to another calculation, 45½ miles, without having touched a boat or artificial support of any kind. Subsequently he swam at the Lambeth Baths, and the Westminster Aquarium, and last year, at Boston, U.S., he remained in a tank nearly 128½ hours. Latterly he had suffered from congestion of the lungs, and his health had become much impaired.

The story of his final and fatal effort needs here but a brief description. At two minutes past four, on July 24, Webb dived from the boat opposite the Maid of the Mist landing, and, amid the shouts and applause of the crowd, struck the water. He swam leisurely down the river, but made good progress. He passed along the rapids at a great pace, and six minutes after making the first plunge passed under the Suspension Bridge. Immediately below the bridge the river becomes exceedingly violent, and as the water was clear every movement of Webb could be seen. At one moment he was lifted high on the crest of a wave, and the next he sank into the awful hollow created. As the river became narrower, and still more impetuous, Webb would sometimes be struck by a wave, and for a few moments would sink out of sight. He, however, rose to the surface without apparent effort. But his speed momentarily increased, and he was hurried along at a frightful pace. At length he was swept into the neck of the whirlpool. Rising on the crest of the highest wave, he lifted his hands once, and then was precipitated into the yawning gulf. For one moment his head appeared above the angry waters, but he was motionless, and evidently at the mercy of the waves. He was again drawn under the water, and was seen no more alive. Some days later his body was found four miles below the fatal Rapids. It bore tokens of the fearful violence of the struggle which he had undergone. His bathing drawers were torn to fragments, and there was a deep wound in his head. An inquest was held, and the jury returned a verdict of "Found drowned."

Captain Webb was married about three years ago, and leaves a widow and two children. It is understood that he risked his life in this last fatal attempt to obtain money for the support of his family.--_London Graphic_.

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SEMI-DETACHED VILLAS, BROMFIELD CRESCENT, HEADINGLEY.

These houses are situated in a pleasant part of Headingley, which is the favorite residential suburb in the locality of Leeds. As regards accommodation, the ground-floor of each house comprises good-sized drawing and dining rooms, each with bay windows; well-lighted entrance halls, opening upon wooden verandas; kitchen, pantry, and scullery; on first floor are three good bedrooms, a bathroom, and other necessary accommodation; on second floor are two additional bedrooms. The basement contains coal-place and larder.

In these houses an attempt has been made to produce conveniently-planned and well-arranged habitations, combined with a pleasing and picturesque exterior, without involving a large outlay of money. The materials used are brick of a deep red color for facings, red terra-cotta from Messrs. Wilcock & Co., of Burmantofts, for moulded strings, sills, etc., and a very sparing use of stone from the Harehills Quarries. The front gables are constructed of timber in solid scantlings, well framed, and pinned together with oak pegs, filled in and well backed behind with brickwork; the panels faced with cement, which, together with the cored cornice, are finished in vellum color. The whole of the woodwork of exterior is painted a neutral shade of peacock blue, forming an admirable contrast with the deep red of the bricks, the sashes and casements only being finished in cream color. The whole of the chimneypieces in the interior are carried out from the architect's special design; those in the drawing-rooms being of mahogany, finished in rosewood color, and those in dining-rooms of oak, stained with ammonia and dull wax polished.

The houses, with outbuildings and boundary walls, which have been erected for Mr. John Hall Thorp, of Bromfield, Headingley, have cost £1,450, or thereabouts, this amount not including the price of land. They have been carried out from the designs and under the superintendence of Mr. William H. Thorp, A.R.I.B.A., architect, of St. Andrew's Chambers, Park Row, Leeds.--_The Architect_.

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THE DWELLINGS OF THE POOR IN PARIS.

In view of the possible approach of cholera, and the sanitary precautions that even the most neglectful of authorities are constrained to take, it is of some interest to us, says the _Building News_, to know how the poor are housed in the city of Paris, which contains, more than any city in the world, the opposite poles of luxurious magnificence and of sordid, bestial poverty. The statistics of the Parisian working classes in the way of lodgings are not of an encouraging nature, and reflect great discredit on the powers that be, who can be stern enough in the case of any political question, but are blind to the spectacle of fellow creatures living the life of beasts under their very eyes. In 1880, the Prefect of Police gave licenses to 21,219 arrivals in the city of French origin, and to 7,344 foreigners. In the succeeding year, the former had increased to 22,061, while the latter had somewhat diminished, being only 5,493. There was a census taken in 1881, from which it appeared that Paris contained 677,253 operatives and 255,604 employes and clerks, while out of every 1,000 inhabitants, 322 only were born in the city, and 565 came from the departments or the French colonies. The foreign element in the working classes has increased very rapidly, numbering 119,349 in 1876, to which by 1881 there was an addition of 44,689. To every 1,000 inhabitants, Paris now numbers 75 foreigners, though in 1876 the proportion was only 60. It may not be amiss to state that the annual increase of the Paris population is at the rate of 56,043 persons, and that in the five years 1876-81, the city received 280,217 additional mouths. The total population of the capital is 2,239,928, of whom 1,113,326 are males.

Returning to the poorer classes, we find that in 1872 they were estimated at 100,000; but that in 1873 they had risen to 113,733, and in 1880 to 123,735. It is unfortunate to be obliged to say that the majority of these people are housed worse in Paris than in almost any other great city in the world. There are two classes of lodgings for the poor--the one where the workman rents one or more rooms for his family, and, perhaps, owns a little furniture; the other, a single room tenanted for the night only by the unmarried man who pays for his bed in the morning and gets his meals anywhere that he can. Readers will remember how, under the auspices of M. Haussmann, western Paris was almost pulled down and transformed into a series of palatial boulevards and avenues. While the work lasted the Paris workman was well pleased; but he did not like it quite so much when the demon of restoration and renovation invaded his own quarters, such as the Butte des Moulins, and all that densely populated district through which the splendid Avenue de l'Opera now runs. The effect of all this was to drive the workman into the already crowded quarters at the barriers, such as La Gare, St. Lambert, Javel, and Charonne, where, according to the last statistics of the _Annuaire_, the increase was at the rate of 415 per 1,000. Of course the ill health that always pervaded these quarters increased also; and, from the reports of Dr. Brouardel and M. Muller, the number of deaths from typhoid and diphtheria were doubled in ten years. Dr. Du Mesnil, in making his returns for 1881 of convalescents from typhoid, remarked that the most unsanitary arrondissements were the 4th, 11th, 15th, 18th, and 19th--precisely those to which the principal migrations of laborers had taken place. The 18th arrondissement, which in 1876 had only 601 lodging houses with 8,933 lodgers, had, in 1882, over 850, with 20,816 inmates. In the 19th arrondissement there were 517 houses in 1876, with 9,074 lodgers, and 752 in 1882, with 17,662 inhabitants.

It is not only the crowded condition of the poor quarters that is such a standing menace to the health of the city, but also the shocking state of the rooms, which the unhappy lodgers are obliged to put up with. The owners of the property are, as happens in other places besides Paris, unscrupulous and grasping to the last degree, and have not only divided and subdivided the accommodation wherever possible, but have even raised the rental in nearly all cases. Whole families are crowded into a small apartment, icy cold in winter, an oven in summer, the only air and daylight which reaches the interior coming from a window which looks on to a dirty staircase or a still fouler court reeking with sewage. There are at the present time in Paris 3,000 lodgings which have neither stove nor chimney; over 5,000 lighted only by a skylight; while in 4,282 rooms there are four children in each below 14 years of age; 7,199 with three children; and 1,049 with four beds in each. The Parisian population has augmented only 15 per cent. in seven years; but the district of poor lodging houses has increased by twenty per cent., and the number of lodgings by about 80 per cent. It is true that a law was passed in 1850 to provide for the sanitary supervision of this class of property; but in Paris the law is a dead letter, and, although it is now active in the provinces and in places like Marseilles, Lyons, Bordeaux, and Nantes, it is applied, even there, in a jerky and intermittent manner.

Perhaps the worst of the abominable dogkennels called houses was the group known as the Cité des Kroumirs, in the 13th arrondissement, which, by a strange irony, was built on land belonging to the Department of Public Assistance, which was let out by that body to a rich tenant, who sublet it to these lodging-house owners. This veritable den of infection and misery has now been demolished; but there are plenty of others quite as bad. Notably, there is the Cite Jeanne d'Arc (a poor compliment to have named it after that sturdy heroine), an enormous barrack of five stories, which contains 1,200 lodgings and 2,486 lodgers. No wonder that it was decimated in 1879 by smallpox, which committed terrible ravages here. The Cité Dore is grimly known by the poor-law doctors as the "Cemetery Gateway." The Cite Gard, in the Rue de Meaux, is inhabited by 1,700 lodgers, although it is almost in ruins. The Cite Philippe is tenanted by 70 chiffonniers, and anybody who knows what are the contents of the chiffonnier's basket, or _hotte_, may easily guess at the effluvia of that particular group of houses. A large lodging-house in the Rue des Boulangers is tenanted by 210 Italians, who get their living as models or itinerant musicians. Both house and tenants are declared to be unapproachable from the vermin.

It is some satisfaction to know that these houses have lately awakened the apathy of some of the public bodies, and that more than one scheme is being put forward with a view of erecting proper industrial dwellings. The Municipal Council is negotiating with the Credit Foncier for the erection of a certain number of cheap houses, which, for the space of twenty years, will be exempt from all taxes, such as octroi, highway, door and window tax, etc. There are also one or two semi-private companies, which are occupying themselves with the question, and it is to be hoped that the rumors of the pestilence in Egypt may hasten the much-needed reform.

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There can be no doubt, says the _Engineer_, that the inventor who could supply in a really portable form a machine or apparatus that could give out two or three horse power for a day would reap an enormous fortune. Up to the present time, however, nothing of the kind has been placed in the market. Gas is laid on to most houses now, and gas engines are plenty enough, yet they do not meet the want which a storage battery may be made yet perhaps to supply.

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RECENT EXPERIMENTS AFFECTING THE RECEIVED THEORY OF MUSIC.

To prove the incorrectness of Helmholtz's statement that beats do not colesce into musical sounds, but that the ear will distinguish them as a rumbling noise, even when their number rises as high as 132 vibrations per second, Rudolph Koenig has constructed a series of tuning forks, recently presented by President Morton to the Stevens Institute of Technology. The following table exhibits the number of vibrations per second of these forks, the ratios of their vibrations when two are sounded together, the number of beats produced, and the resultant sound:

Vibrations per second. Ratio. Beats. Sounds.

3840 :4096 15:16 128 Ut_{2} 3904 : " 61:64 96 Sol_{1} 3936 : " 123:128 80 Mi_{1} 3968 : " 31:32 64 Ut_{1} 3976 : " 497:512 60 Si_{-1} 3989.3 : " 187:192 53.3 La_{-1} 4000 : " 125:128 48 Sol_{1} 4010.7 : " 47:48 42.7 Fa_{-1} 4016 : " 251:256 40 Mi_{-1} 4024 : " 503:512 36 Re_{-1} 7936 : 8192 31:32 128 Ut_{2} 8064 : " 63:64 64 Ut_{1} 8096 : " 253:256 48 Sol_{-1} 8106.7 : " 95:96 42.7 Fa_{-1} 8112 : " 507:512 40 Mi_{-1} 8120 : " 1015:1024 36 Re_{-4} 8128 : " 127:128 32 Ut_{-4}

On sounding two forks nearly in unison, the sound heard corresponds to a number of vibrations equal to the difference of the numbers of vibrations of the forks.

On sounding two forks, one of which is nearly the octave of the other, the ear perceives a sound, which is that given by vibrations whose number equals the difference in the number of vibrations of the higher fork and the upper octave of the lower fork.

Koenig has also found out the laws of the resultant sounds produced by other intervals than the octave, and has extended his researces to intervals differing by any number of vibrations, as may be seen from the above table.

His conclusion is that beats and resultant sounds are one and the same phenomenon.

Thus, for example, the lowest number of vibrations capable of producing a musical sound is 32 per second; in like manner, a clear musical sound is produced by two simple notes of sufficient intensity which produce 32 beats per second.

Koenig also made a very ingenious modification of the siren for the purpose of enabling Seebeck to sound simultaneously notes whose vibrations had any given ratio. It is furnished for this purpose with eight disks, each of which contains a given number of circles of holes arranged at different angular distances. A description of this instrument, which is also the property of the Stevens Institute, and of Seebeck's experiments is thus given in a letter by Koenig himself.

I.

_Effects produced when the isochronism of the shocks is not perfect_.

A.

In order to produce a note, the succession of shocks must not deviate much from isochronism.

If the isochronism is but little impaired, we obtain a note corresponding to the mean interval of the shocks.

If the intervals between the shocks are alternately t and t', and if the difference between t and t' is slight, we obtain the two notes t+t' and (t+t')/2. If the intervals between the shocks are alternately t, t', and t'', we obtain the two notes t+t'+t'' and (t+t'+t")/3.

Disk No. 1 has--

On circle No. 1 12 holes, angular distances t=30° " " 2 24 " " " 15° " " 3 36 " " " 10° " " 4 36 " at irregular distances. " " 5 36 " distances t= 10½°, t'=l0°,t''=9½° " " 6 36 " " 11° 10° 9° " " 7 36 " " 16° 14° " " 8 36 " " 16½° 13½°

Circle No. 8 produces the two notes of circles 1 and 2; circle No. 7 the same, but the low note is stronger than in 8.

Circle 6 produces the notes of circles 1 and 3, and so does circle 5, but in the latter the low note is stronger than in 6.

Circle 4 produces a noise approximating only to the note of circle 3.