Page:The present and general condition of sanitary science.djvu/15

9 economical in result) intakes may now be opened into the purest superior strata of air, and it may be pumped down and delivered at a rate required, into public edifices, into the larger schools and workshops, warmed in cold weather, and cooled in hot weather. Had this new means of sanitation been understood at the time of the erection of the new public offices, two sets of officers might have been enabled to work well, where one now works ill, and not with comfort, above half a day, in the large, ill-ventilated rooms, which are reservoirs of impurity, from which Ministers of State have declared that they have been driven to work at home. From India I have collected experiences where the fog just covered the infantry, but where the cavalry were seated above it, and another experience also where a foot messenger could not pass, but where a messenger on an elephant might. In such places, by shorter tubular arrangements, the fresher air may be reached at an expense less than that of the punkha, and healthy rest obtained free from the torment of mosquitos.

Experiments may be required to determine the height for a tubular intake (which may be of copper sheathing) to be raised above the clock tower to avoid the discharges of the high chimneys of bone boilers and others (which themselves require correction) and to ensure for the Houses of Parliament, and the new public offices, air of complete purity for their ventilation.

Let me do justice to the intellectual by referring to some of the experiences of the working of the half-time school principle. At the half-time District School of Anerley, and of others of them, excluding absolute idiots, full ninety per cent. are got to "the good," that is to say, to wages when they leave of 8s., 10s., and 12s. per week, or nearly the former wages of adults. When I last visited the half-time school of Manchester, at Swinton, the head-mistress there asked what need they had of emigration when they have three applications for every girl as soon as she was fitted for a place. When the Dowager Empress of Germany visited the half-time school of Norwood, the head-mistress declared that she had the greatest difficulty in meeting the pressing applications for girls for good places. And there can be no doubt that many will be carried from them who