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Before the simplicity of our cars was arrived at, inventors had to give up boilers, fire-boxes, valves, steam-pipes, cylinders, pistons, wheels, cranks, levers, and a host of minor parts. Wheels died hard.

Fire-boxes and spittoons, I should mention, were freely handed about; so that half-an-hour which passed before the sermon began was agreeably spent. In the meanwhile, mass was being celebrated in the main hall of the temple, and the monotonous nasal drone of the plain chant was faintly heard in the distance.

Except in the coldest of weather it is not necessary to renew the fire in such a stove more than once daily, and one armful of wood is the standard fuel consumption at each firing. Another of the fire-boxes in the main stove is a large smooth-floored and vaulted opening with a little front porch roofed by a hood leading into the chimney.

It is true the Wootten locomotives on the Philadelphia and Reading Railway have fire-boxes with a grate area of as much as 76 square feet, but these boxes extend clean over the wheels, and the heating surface in the tubes is only 982 square feet; but although these engines run at a speed of forty-two miles an hour, they are hardly the type to be adopted for such a service as is being considered.

It hardly needed the carpenter to tell the story, for the ship had a heavy list to starboard. In a minute or two the stokers came up from below and close upon their heels, the engineer. "The water is close to the fire-boxes, Captain Murchison," he said. "I know, Mr. Macdonald," the captain answered. "Boat stations!" he cried.

A modification of double-ended boiler is that introduced by Mr. Alfred Holt. It has many decided advantages, but is costly to make. The formation of the two ends into separate fire-boxes leaves the bottom of the boiler free to adapt itself to the variations of temperature to which it is exposed.

Fires are necessarily frequent, as the majority of the houses are constructed of wood; and such dangerous articles as paper-lanterns, small charcoal fire-boxes, and movable open stoves, for household purposes, are in common use.

Passing onward, they came to a workshop where iron castings of all kinds were being made; cylinders, fire-boxes, etcetera, and a savage-looking place it was, with numerous holes and pits of various shapes and depths in the black earthy floor, which were the moulds ready, or in preparation, for the reception of the molten metal.

Mild steel fire-boxes, which have been employed in America, are not in favor here, copper being universally used; they have been tried on the Caledonian, Great Southern and Western, North London, and North-Western, and were found not to succeed. Brake blocks of cast iron have now generally superseded wood; steel is being more and more used, especially on the North Western.

These stoves are constructed of masonry and are built before the partitions of the house are put in and before the walls are completed. In the main stove there are three fire-boxes and a maze of surrounding air-spaces and smoke-passages, and surmounting all a great chimney which in two-story houses is itself made into a heating-stove with one fire-box for the upper rooms.