I have read your various articles upon heating and ventilating houses, with much interest. And this, partly because of the great general importance of the subject, but especially, because of its connection with my own health and comfort. A pulmonary affection has driven me for two winters past, to the South, in search of a milder and purer air than, with our present modes of arranging houses, could be found at the North. In your work on Country Houses, you concede, if I remember rightly, that the best modes now practiced for securing a warm and wholesome air in our homes in winter, are most expensive, and not likely to be adopted by persons of moderate income. If any plan can be contrived, suitable for general use, it would certainly be a great public benefit. Profiting by some of your own suggestions, allow me to propose a plan which may lead towards such a result.

For the month of October, November and April, open fire-places, with Arnott's chimney-valve, in every room, will answer all needful purposes. But when December's blasts begin to blow, place your stove in any convenient part of the room, enclose it in a tasteful Russia iron case, leaving a space between the two on all sides, of six or eight inches. Let a door be made in the sheet iron case, corresponding to the door of the inner stove, only somewhat larger, to facilitate putting in fuel. Have a place in the outer stove sunk in over against the draught of the inner, so that the draught will communicate with the sir of the apartment, and not with that between the two stoves. Cover the top of this sheet iron case with an ornamental grate, or wire gauze, surrounding the urn of water standing on the inner stove. Now connect this apparatus with the air out of doors, by a tin conductor, from three to five inches in diameter, leading from your cellar window, along under the parlor floor, and then up through the floor, immediately under the stove, into the open space before described.

Insert a register in the pipe directly under the stove, by turning which with your foot, you can easily regulate the quantity of fresh air you wish to admit.

These outer staves can be made quite ornamental, and can be put up in as many rooms as you desire to warm.

The objects proposed to be gained by this arrangement are obvious. Fresh air will be constantly introduced into the house, and yet not admitted into the apartment occupied, until it has passed around the heated sides of the stove, and become somewhat warmed. In this state, no harm can accrue from it to the health of the most delicate, while if a similar volume of cold air were permitted to poor directly into therooa, the health of ell would be endangered. With this apparatus for supplying pure, warm air, and Arnott's chimney valve for carrying it off as it becomes vitiated, should we not have a simple, economical, and efficient mode of warming and ventilating country houses?

The only practical difficulty in it which has occurred to me is, that with such a current of cold air continually surrounding the inner stove, there might not be sufficient heat radiated to warm the room. Perhaps, however, the warm air pouring out from the top of the sheet iron case would accomplish this. If it would furnish 60° or 65o Fahr., it woould give as high a temperature as a person ought to live and sleep in during the extreme cold and fluctuations of our northern winters. Please give us your opinion as to the practicability of the plan above suggested. Respectfully yours, A. D. G Clinton, N. Y.

Warming And Ventilating Houses #1

Read this over and again, every one who is building a house, and all who contemplate introducing stoves and warming apparatus of any kind, into those already occupied. No more important subject can occupy,your attention.