and gas. The top of each house is terrace-built,
like the houses of the East; with posts
and pegs and lines for hanging clothes; a
protecting parapet of sufficient height around,
and sufficient space to enable the dwellers to
botanise with a few flower-pots, and to sit
and chat, and smoke, and breathe fresh
air. The sewerage, the dust, the water, and
the gas, are not left to the carelessness of
each family. One system manages the whole
of these matters for the whole of the dwellings;
and a trifling expenditure of time and
trouble by a central authority, suffices to
maintain good order in these very essential
particulars. Ventilation is ensured by the
use of air bricks, ventilating shafts, and by
windows made of cast iron, hung upon pivots
and glazed with plate glass, such as can be
opened with ease and readiness. Such are
the workmen's dwellings built by the Birkenhead
Dock Company with the intention of
letting each complete dwelling at a rent varying
from three to five shillings a week, and
with a view of obtaining a fair but not large
interest for the capital expended.

The house that Jack built, however, or is
about to build, or ought to build, in the
regular streets of a regular town, is in many
respects not so curious as that which is
required in the new lands of the west and
south. Of Canvas town, a community living
under and around tents, we have more recently
had an example at Chobham; and of a still
more remarkable Canvas Town in the vicinity
of Melbourne, the reader will remember a
notice in the three hundred and sixty-first
page of our seventh volume. But let us see
how Jack builds his go-ahead houses in wood
and iron and papier-maché?

The problem to be solved is, how to build
a house in England, to take it to pieces, to
pack it in a box or into a compact mass, to
convey it on shipboard to the New World, and
then to set it upright again on its feet in a
morning. Now this is done very cleverly indeed.
Sometimes a cunning artificer makes
a cart, so shafted and wheeled and tilted, that
it will furnish the emigrant with a snug sleeping-room
for the first few nights of his sojourn
at his new home; while, on the voyage,
it does duty as a packing-case, in which his
traps may be stowed away. Sometimes a
carpenter so fashions a wooden house, that
the flooring-boards form a large box into
which the whole of the rest of the house is
packed. We must not say that a man, after
having finished his breakfast some fine
morning, could take up his floor, wrap up his
house in it, and carry it off on his shoulders;
but the truth makes as near an approach to
this state of things as any reasonable person
could desire. Sometimes the builder goes a
little beyond the region of timber, and furnishes
his portable house with ridge-pieces of
grooved iron, and zinc plates and felt to form
a roofing.

When California was in the first throes of
its madness, after the discovery of the gold in
eighteen hundred and forty-seven, and before
the construction of large and commodious
buildings. Jack assisted by his cousin Jonathan,
found by a stroke of genius a house ready
built to his hands. Among the ships that
went to San Francisco was one of a thousand
tons burthen. No sooner did it cast anchor,
than the sailors jumped ashore and scampered
off to the diggings as fast as their legs could
carry them. The captain, left alone with nobody
to "start" and nobody to navigate his
ship, bethought him of turning it into a shop.
He purchased such commodities as his small
capital placed within his reach, and opened
shop in his ship; which formed a storehouse,
paying neither rent nor rates nor taxes.
In China, ship-shops are not such impromptu
matters; the rivers, and canals, and harbours
bear a floating population who wholly
live on the water; the boats are their
shops, warehouses, sitting-rooms, bed-rooms,
and kitchens. There is in this something
analogous to the pedlar's cart; the Chinese
and the pedlar bring the shop to the customers;
whereas, in the ordinary course of
everyday life, the customers go to the shop.

Jack now uses sheet iron to house his emigrants.
It is said that the iron-house manufactory
at Bedminster, near Bristol, owed its
establishment to the endeavours of the proprietor
to build an iron house for his own son
when about to depart for Australia. He succeeded
so well as to establish by degrees a
business in that department of manufacture,
now occupying a large number of busy workmen.
There are three groups of subjects to
which attention is here paid—the ironwork,
the woodwork, and the ventilation. The ironwork
(galvanised corrugated sheet iron) comprises
the walls, roof, and ridge capping, and
is well protected from the rusting action of
the weather. The woodwork (the framing,
sills, doors, sashes, &c.) undergoes a seasoning
process in a hot room, heated to a higher
temperature than any to which the house
will be exposed in the region to which it is
to be transported. The ventilation is insured
by leaving a space of three inches or so
between the iron walls and the wood lining;
through which space the air can circulate.
By this construction, too, the interior of the
building is very much shielded from summer
heat and winter cold; and this equalising
tendency is further aided by the employment
of felt as a non-conductor of heat. The corrugating
and the galvanising of sheet iron are
really most advantageous inventions for all
such purposes: the one gives strength, and
the other preserves the metal from rust.

An iron church for Australia was built
about half a year ago; and a smart little
church it is. It comprises a nave, two side
aisles, pulpit, reading-desk, baptistry, vestry,
and tower, mostly of iron. It is seventy feet
long by forty-eight feet wide. The outside
consists entirely of galvanised corrugated