(3.) The surface should be kept clean by using a brush with a cloth tied over it, and if offensive liquids are spilt, they should be immediately removed, the surface washed with soap and water, and immediately dried. (4.) List slippers, which ought to be part of Hospital furniture, effectually obviate risk of slipping. It would hardly be possible, however, to make deal floors as slippery as oak _parquet_, because the surface (except of very fine deal, such as is used for musical instruments) never takes so high a polish. (5.) Dry rubbing, which is done with sand, or with sandstone, is not well adapted for ordinary sick wards, on account of the dust; unless it be very carefully done. The rationale of it is to remove a certain amount of the surface of the floor. It answers very well on board ship. A certain amount of surface cleaning may be done by rubbing with a hard short brush; it is, however, defective. The wood becomes in time saturated with organic matter, and only wants moisture to give off noxious effluvia. (6.) Scrubbing is absolutely objectionable, for this reason. In any schoolroom, reading-room, institute, which is much inhabited, a smell, while the floor is being scrubbed, is very perceptible, quite different from that of soap and water. It is the exhalation from the organic matter which has entered the floor from the feet and breath of the inhabitants. How much more dangerous this in Hospital Wards need hardly be said. There is at Bethanien Hospital, at Berlin, a very admirable flooring, which would be worth trying in England. The floors throughout are wood, prepared in the following manner:--The floor is first oiled with linseed oil, and then rubbed over with a peculiar “laque” varnish, the technical process of which will be found in the note,[15] and polished, so as to resemble French polish. Every three years or so the rooms and wards are successively emptied for a fortnight, when a new flooring is laid, re-oiled, varnished with the laque varnish, and thoroughly dried. Every day the floors are wet-rubbed by means of a piece of sacking or coarse webbing at the end of a long, hard broom, the performer stands for the performance, also while immediately afterwards, having wrung the sacking completely dry, she goes over the ground again with the dry sacking. One, or, in case of the weekly extra wet-rubbing, two dry rubbings, dry the floor completely in a few minutes from the cessation of the wet-rubbing, never more than ten minutes. Three or four times a year the ward floors are thoroughly wetted with water thrown on, and the floors scrubbed with a long brush. Neither soap, soda, &c., is used. The great advantages of this are:-- (1.) That it purifies the air exceedingly and freshens the wards. (2.) That it reduces the daily accumulation of dust to a minimum. (3.) That it dries completely within ten minutes from being wet-rubbed.