During the excessive heat of summer, when sitting within doors is even more con ducive to discomfort than walking at a moderate pace out of doors, it may be useful to bear in mind a very simple application— practicable by any oue—of a natural law, which will enable a professional man to write Without the slightest inconvenience from the heated atmosphere. Every child at school learn3 something about the influence of water in modifying climate, and any person, however ill informed, who has passed through a floricultnral exhibition, or a build ing like the Crystal Palace, must have uoticed how gratefully cool the atmosphere always is in the immediate neighbourhood of fountains playing. Just the same general lowering of our temperature maybe produced in any private sitting-room, without the expense of fountains. A basin, or dish, large enough to present a good surface, filled with wat ;r, and placed on the centre of a table in the forepart of the day, is amply Mifficitnt for the purpose: the writer has even found an ordinary glass tumbler full of water, rt-newed once (late in the afternoon) potential enough when he has sut all the day engaged in reading and writing in a small study, on the hotttst days we have had dui iug four years past. The hot air takes up the water in the form of atmospheric vapour, and, enactiug in little the part of the clouds, diffuses the greater coolness of the water throughout the room until both air and water are at the same point; when that is attained, if the heat of the day be not spent, the water, needs renewing. Of course, the effect does not depend upon any specific form of vessel. This may be plain or it may be ornamental; it. may take the form of a table decoration; it may even—this hint is for the ladies and for artists—be a species of well, with a flower vase springing from the centre, the welcome perfumes of which shall be borne together with cooJing influences by the water-charged air; there is only one condition imperative —namely, that free contact of air and water over the whole surface of the latter shall not be obstructed.—Public Health.
