ESSAY IV.
OF
CHIMNEY FIREPLACES,
WITH

PROPOSALS for improving them to save Fuel;
to render Dwelling-houses more COMFORTABLE and
SALUBRIOUS, and effectually to prevent Chimnies
from SMOKING.

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x

[303]

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ADVERTISEMENT.

The Author thinks it his duty to explain the reasons which have induced him to change the order in which the publications of his Essays has been announced to the Public.
Being suddenly called upon to send to Edinburgh a person acquainted with the method of altering chimney fire-places, which has lately been carried into execution in a number of houses in London, in order to introduce these improvements in Scotland, he did not think it prudent to send any person on so important an errand without more ample instructions than could well be given verbally; and being obliged to write on the subject, he thought it best to investigate the matter thoroughly, and to publish such particular directions respecting the improvements in question as may be sufficient to enable all those, who may be desirous of adopting them, to make, or direct the necessary alterations in their fire-places without any further assistance.

x 2
[304]
Of Chimney Fire-places.

The following letter, which the Author received from Sir John Sinclair, Baronet, MP, and President of the Board of Agriculture, will explain this matter more fully:

"You will hear with pleasure that your mode of altering chimnies, so as to prevent their smoking, to save fuel, and to augment heat, has answered not only with me, but with many of my friends who have tried it, and that the Lord Provost and Magistrates of Edinburgh have voted a sum of money to defray the expences of a bricklayer, who is to be sent there for the purpose of establishing the same plan in that city. I hope that you will have the goodness to expedite your paper upon the management of Heat, that the knowledge of so useful an art may be as rapidly and as extensively diffused as possible.
With my best wishes for your success in the various important pursuits in which you are now engaged, believe me, with great truth and regard,
Whitehall, London
9th February, 1796

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