The nearest approach to the open fire-place is the grate for burning soft coal, and when arranged with its ash pit as before described in this work, is very easy to keep clean. This method of heating is now very general and answers the purpose quite well. A good mantel and grate may be obtained at from thirty dollars upward.

Heating furnaces, burning wood or hard coal, are very much used also. Out of the many patterns made, some are reasonably good, among which we would recommend the Boynton, the Magee, the Ruby, and the Dome furnaces. All modern styles have a reservoir for holding water, to be evaporated into the hot-air chamber, and thereby moistening the heated air and giving a warmth more like steam. With old-style furnaces, the difficulty was that the air was burned or vitiated, and thus rendered unfit to breathe. This obstacle is mainly overcome in the modern furnace.

The furnace should have a cold-air supply-box or conductor leading from the outside, and also a register in the hall with conductor leading to the furnace. This will take the cold air from the rooms when heating begins. The supply conductor from outside should be ample, and should have a cut-off for regulating the supply of cold air.

Most furnaces can be used without being covered with brick; but we advise, as a means of economizing heat, that they be bricked in, first by a single four-inch wall, and around this, with an air-space of ten inches between, an eight-inch wall. This arrangement leaves a space between the furnace and first wall, and the inside of this wall should be covered with plaster-of-Paris, as it is a non-conductor of heat.

The pipes conducting the hot air should be of tin or galvanized iron, and should be let into the top of hot-air chamber over the furnace. The warm conductors leading: to the rooms of the first floor, open into a register in the floor, which should be bricked in around, four inches from any wood. The conductors to upper stories should be by means of tin flues in the walls, and these should open by register into rooms just above the base board. The smoke pipe should be connected with the highest and largest flue in the house.

, Steam as a means of heating dwellings is comparatively new and not very generally used yet outside of large cities. In Detroit, and two or three other large cities, there is a section of the city, covering an area of nearly one square mile, successfully supplied with steam, by a Steam Supply Company, from a battery of boilers all located in one building, the steam being carried in pipes laid under the pavement. This method has been tested sufficiently to demonstrate its superiority over all others as a means of heating large buildings with many rooms. The ease with which steam finds its way through pipes to the remotest part of a building, without any sensible loss of heat, gives it a great advantage over furnace heating.

The method is healthful, and with the present precautions and use of low pressure boilers, no serious accident can attend its use. The radiator pipes or drums for each room are made in an endless variety of designs, painted, gilded, and varnished; and while the cost of putting in a boiler and pipes is greater, the saving of fuel and safety from fire will soon repay the additional expense.

One hint may be profitably added here, to those who are not accustomed to steam; every radiator must have, of course, a place for the admission of steam, and this is always supplied with a valve to turn off the steam and turn it on as occasion requires, and every radiator must have a small air exhaust, at the opposite side or end from the valve. It is sometimes omitted by the workman, but must be put in or the register will not work. When the steam is turned on, open this air exhaust until the steam drives out all the air, and when the steam is turned off, open exhaust to let air in.