The fireplace or open hearth, which has become so popular with us as the pleasantest and healthiest mode of heating and also insuring ventilation, should be discarded for something much better. The fact that the fire is directly beneath the chimney flue explains the fact that eighty-seven per cent of the total heat yielded by coal or coke and ninety-four per cent of that yielded by wood escapes through the chimney. This enormous loss of temperature arises from the current of air necessary for combustion, carrying with it a large quantity of the heat produced which is lost in the atmosphere. This of course is a means of _ventilation_, but a little reflection will convince almost anyone that it cannot be the most practical, and in this State where coal is very high it is equally expensive. The smoke, soot, and ashes that are inseparable from the open fireplace make it troublesome and dirty, not to say anything of the coal gas, which poisons the atmosphere of a room, and I have often noticed its noxious influence on infants. There are objections against warming one or two rooms of a house and leaving the others cold. A warm sitting room, while the halls and bedrooms remain cold and chilly, is a very fruitful source of cold and catarrhs. There is a vast difference between heating for health, and heating to have warm rooms; in the former, the warm rooms would be incidental to health and comfort, while in the latter you might sacrifice health for warm rooms. Heating by hot air has serious objections that may be briefly stated as follows: Fresh air passing through or around red hot furnaces, becomes so rarefied that it no longer contains sufficient oxygen for healthful breathing purposes. The expansion and contraction of the furnace allows the escape of the noxious gases of combustion which become unavoidably mixed with the hot air that is to heat the dwelling, and thus vitiate the air that is to be breathed, and should there be any malaria from defective sewerage in the basement that, too, would be circulated with the heated air. It seems also to be impossible to distribute hot air equally to all the rooms of a house through long flues, for the hot air is choked off at the registers by the counter currents of cold air from the rooms on the side of the house exposed to the winds, while the protected side is always overheated. I have practically demonstrated, in my own residence, that hot water is the most simple and efficient means of heating a dwelling for both health and comfort, and for several reasons: There is no danger of overheating, and there is no possibility of vitiating the air, because the temperature of the hot water is always lower than even the boiling point.