Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 3.djvu/309

Rh  recently expressed by an eminent authority relative to the probable blending of those deposits with the marine deposits of the Tertiary: "A careful study of these modern deposits" (meaning the Quaternary) "will undoubtedly show consecutive links by which it was united to the Tertiary period, in the same manner as the Cretaceous and Tertiary are connected." It is difficult to conceive how the sedimentary deposits of an epoch of submergence, like the Tertiary, which abound in marine fossils, can show, however carefully studied, consecutive links of connection with an epoch of débris transported and deposited through the agency of vast continental glaciers.

March, 1873.

 

HE question of saving fuel for cooking purposes is even more important than economy in warming; because cooking is an operation required every day in the year, and the waste of fuel in cooking is even more considerable than in warming.

An ordinary cooking-range in houses, which, for convenience, may be designated middle-class houses, is derived from the time when the same fire was used for cooking and for warming. It is interesting to consider Count Rumford's remarks on this question. He largely developed the use of steam for cooking in large establishments, but, in considering private kitchens, he showed that nine-tenths of the heat produced in cooking operations were wasted, and only one-tenth utilized in cooking, by the use of open fireplaces. He laid down the following principles on fireplace construction:

1. Each fireplace should have its grate on which the fuel must be placed, and its separate ash-pit, which must be closed by a door well fitted in its frame and furnished with a register for regulating the quantity of air admitted into the fireplace through the grate. It should also have its separate canal for carrying off the smoke into the chimney, which canal should be furnished with a damper or register. By means of this damper and of the ash-pit door, the rapidity of combustion and generation of heat is regulated, and on the proper use of the two registers the economy of fuel will much depend.

3. In fireplaces for all boilers which are too heavy to be easily lifted with the hand, an opening just above the level of the grate should be made for introducing fuel to the fire, which opening must