fact that the soot which smudges the collars
and chitterlings of our citizens, that ruins
our finest paintings, that blackens our public
buildings, that suffocates our country-born
babies, that kills our plants, that fleeces our
sheep of their whiteness, that blackens our
faces, and buries our whole bodies in palls of
fog, is also constantly passing into our lungs;
and, as the cells of that organ were not
intended to act as soot-sifters, any more than
Sam Slick's watches were made to be bruised
under sledge-hammers, they soon become
the "vile prisons of afflicted breath;" and,
stopping it altogether, add mournful entries
to the books of the Registrar General of
Deaths.

By Lord Palmerston's Smoke Abatement
Act, all furnaces in London must, after
the first of August next, be so constructed
or altered as to consume their own smoke;
but it has been stated that compliance with
the Act will be next to impossible. To test
the accuracy of this prediction let us see
not only whether smoke is destructible, but
whether it cannot be converted into fuel.
In order to solve the problem, look at
a gas-light: see how brightly and clearly it
burns, yet the carburetted hydrogen which
feeds the flame may have been smoke as dense
and as black as that which river steamers
pour over you whenever you have occasion to
cross London Bridge; for, every addition
of coal that is made in the retort (or still) at
the gasometer first gives off smoke, which
becomes inflammable gas by the action of
increased heat, just as smoke of a
domestic fire which is generated when first
coal is put on, becomes flame when there
is a bright fire. Smoke, therefore, which on
cooling becomes soot, becomes, when heated
to more than six hundred degrees of Fahrenheit,
inflammable gas. Every wreath of
smoke that curls up a chimney is so much
wasted fuel; and, when we know that
in the regular manufacture, one pound of
coal suffices to make four cubic feet of
luminiferous gas, we can easily believe Count
Rumford's statement that five-sixths of the
ordinary heat of an English fire goes up the
chimney.

The way to destroy smoke, then, is simply
to burn it: and the heat required to do this
being very great, it seems easier to destroy
smoke in a furnace than in a grate. Among
the most effectual plans hitherto adapted to
furnaces, are those by Messrs, Jucke, Hall,
Hazeldine, and Lee Stevens, Three of these
systems are based upon the effectual expedient
of not putting on too much coal at a time;
and the supply of fuel in small quantities is
so regulated by machinery, that it becomes
almost instantly heated to the non-smoking
degree. The other plan is that of projecting a
streaming wall of hot atmospheric air against
the smoke in its passage from the fire to the
chimney, and so converting it into an
inflammable gas.At the back of the fire a plate
of iron faced with fire-brick is so placed
nearly upright, as to reach from the ashpit to
the crown of the furnace, at the back of it, but
in front of the mouth of the chimney. This
plate eventually becomes intensely heated;
and the air, rushing under the bottom
edge of the plate in the ashpit (where a
space is left for it to enter), becomes
inconceivably hot before it reaches the top, where it
meets the dense gases passing over the upper
edge of the plate. The oxygen contained in
this heated air attains, by expansion, a great
affinity for the carburetted hydrogen and
other combustible gases that are flowing off
from the fire; and, by this means, such of the
carbonic gases as would otherwise pass
wastefully away in volumes of opaque smoke, are
perfectly united, and completely perform the
function of fuel by burning in clear, white,
and elongated flame, whose caloric is rapidly
absorbed by the heating surface of the boiler,
copper, pan, still, or other boiling,
steam-producing, or evaporative vessel to which it is
applied. This is Mr. Lee Stevens's plan, and
it has the great advantage of requiring no
machinery; so that no inattention or
unskilfulness of the stoker can affect its action.
We have witnessed and tested its efficacy at
the oflice of the Times newspaper, at the
famous blacking mart of Day and Martin, and
at the great sweetmeat factory of Hill and
Jones. With necessary attention the other
inventions perform their functions thoroughly,
and we have seen them also in such effectual
operation as to leave no doubt that the smoke
nuisance from factories and steam engines
can be utterly abated.

But, supposing the Act of Parliament to be
complied with by all the tall chimneys of the
metropolis, before we can count upon a clear
atmosphere, there will be an enormous balance
of short chimneys belonging to some eight
hundred thousand domestic houses, to deal with .
And here we turn to Dr. Arnott; whose simple
and ingenious improvement upon Cutler's
grate we can verify is even more efficient for
domestic use than the expedients we have
described are for steam furnaces. We have
already explained that smoke is generated
when coal is first put on, from imperfect
combustion. Dr. Arnott never puts coal on,
and therefore his fire never smokes. He
pushes it up. He does not smother the fire
by pouring fuel upon the top, but causes fuel
to ascend from the bottom. Neither is his a
new grate; but simply a receipt for making old
grates and chimneys smokeless: take out the
bottom of your grate, fix close under the
void an open iron box, six or eight inches
deep, with a moveable bottom; let the
bottom of the box be supported by a
piston-rod, fastened to the hearth, so that,
by means of the poker, it may be pushed
upwards at will: fill the box with coal
enough to last the whole day—say from
twenty to thirty pounds' weight—then light
your fire in the ordinary manner, upon the