I have no doubt that ultimately gas will altogether supersede coal for cooking; but this and all other scientific improvements in domestic comfort and economy must be impossible with the present generation of uneducated domestics, whose brains (with few exceptions) have become torpid and wooden from lack of systematic exercise during their period of growth. THE “CONSUMPTION OF SMOKE.” A great deal has been spoken and written on this subject, but practically nothing has been _done_. At one time I shared the general belief in its possibility, and accordingly examined a multitude of devices for smoke-consuming, and tried several of the most promising, chiefly in furnaces for metallurgical work, for steam boilers and stills. None of them proved satisfactory, and I was driven to the conclusion that smoke-consumption is a delusion, and further, that _economical_ consumption of smoke is practically impossible. When smoke is once formed, the cost of burning it far exceeds the value of the heat that is produced by the combustion of its very flimsy flocculi of carbon. It is a fiend that once raised cannot be exorcised, a Frankenstein that haunts its maker, and will not be appeased. To describe in detail the many ingenious devices that have been proposed and expensively patented and advertised for this object, would carry me far beyond the intended limits of this paper. I must not even attempt this for a selected few, as even among them there is none that can be pronounced satisfactory. The common idea is that if the smoke be carried back to the fire that produced it, and made to pass through it again, a recombustion or consumption of the smoke will take place. This is a mistake, as a little reflection will show. First, let us ask why did this particular fire produce such smoke? Everybody now-a-days can answer this question, as we all know that smoke is a result of imperfect combustion, and, knowing this, it can easily be understood that to return the carbonic acid and excess of carbon to the already suffocated fire can only add smother to smotheration, and make the smoky fire more smoky still.