THE BATTLE OF THE COWLS.
ITENTILATION being one of the aims of modern builders, and smoky chimneys a domestic nuisana2. the tin tops known as cowls must have a place on most houses. But we were hardly prepared for the storm which has been raging round these tops.
The weather report comes in the form of a pamphlet on the " Kew Cowl Tests" (London : Hickson, Ward, and Co., 13.6d.), with a preface by Mr. Perry Fairfax Nursey, C.E., Past President of the Society of Engineers. It has a picture out- side of Justice smiting a serpent, which serpent is about to eat a cherub, who is flying over a precipice. The allegory is a little overloaded, but the serpent apparently represents a badly constructed cowl allegorically figured, and the cherub the right sort of cowL On the -back of the book is another .
picture, in which the serpent's head is chopped off, which must be admitted to be a very good stroke, as Justice, who has made it, is blindfolded.. This suggests that the serpent has been scotched, or rather killed, in the interval between the two covers ; and though it is difficult for outsiders to judge. we rather think the blindfolded lady has "done the trick," if we may use the term on a very serious subject. The story shows that there is no subject or thing which an Englishman will not make an object of his heart's desire, and that in this pursuit he will route unnumbered lions in *e path if his quest is not according to rule, or if when he thinks he has attained it it turns out to be in their view the wrong article after all. Others are perhaps almost as deeply interested; they also feel strongly on the subject; and when, as a correspondent of the Building News says, a Sanitary Institute " cannot afford to become a laughing-stock and a gibe," there is clearly something wrong.
It appears that a Mr. Field, who was an earnest worker in the interests of sanitation, spent £2,000 in having different kinds of cowls tested at Kew twenty-five years ago. He was very fond of cowls, and wished to do everything that he could to perfect the species, so to say. He left 25,000 to the Sani- tary Institute itself, after devoting the later years of his life to the great cowl question. Consequently, the Institute is very properly grateful, and has shown its feeling by publishing a memorial to Mr. Field, under the auspices of what is )mown as the Cowl Committee, in a book called the " Kew Cowl Tests." It is this posthumous affirmation of the value of these tests, and the incidental bolstering up of what is alleged to be an inferior instead of an " up-to-date cowl," which have restarted all the trouble. Even the editor, Professor Shaw, of the Meteorological Office, says that, in fact, the tests made at Kew were practically unsound and unreliable. Few people knew, when a strong application was being made to have further buildings set up in the Old Deer Park at Richmond, because its seclusion made it a perfect and almost unique spot for the tranquil pursuit of important physical experiments, that cowl-testing to cure smoky chimneys, and ventilate hotels, was among these objects. They are important, but it seems that there is just a chance that they might be done elsewhere. Even Kew, or rather the Old Deer Park, was not good enough for the purpose ; or apparently the means which Mr. Field, the enthusiast on cowls, wished to be employed were not the right ones ; for both situation and methods are blamed. But the crux is that after their first experiments the Sanitary Institute patented a cowl, which was conceived on the lines suggested by their imperfect experiments, and have set up this cowl as a model and ensample, whereas the perfect cowl was no more obtained than the perfect pig has been, though it is perhaps not so entirely in the realm of the unobtainable as that ideal animal. This Cowl Committee cowl, or Kew cowl, improperly so named, since Kew disowns it, is really the snake on the covers of the book. The hands which have guided the arms of blindfolded Justice are those which bare held the pens that wrote the letters which form part of Mr. Nursey's book, Their criticisms are the kind of thing which would make any cowl writhe. Even if it belonged to the species unkindly called in Devonshire a " Presbyterian," because it turns with all winds. it could not hope to escape. The correspondence in a fur and feather journal when some one has been tampering with the true type of black-and-tan rabbit, or a dispute about an invention in an engineering paper, scarcely affords such instances of earnestness and feeling. The Ironmonger remarks that time waits for no man, not even for the Sanitary Institute. Another authority says that important experiments of this kind should not be entrusted to private individuals. "There are so many vested and trade interests concerned, that experiments of this character should be removed from the region of professional jealousy and com- mercial recrimination. They should be conducted by a Royal Commission wherever possible, and entrusted to men of pure science,"—which is probably quite true of cowls as well as of other things. The Plumber and Decorator complains of the "archaic tone adopted in dealing with trials of cowls," and feels when reading the Report almost "as if it were opening a book of Herodotus" or looking at illustrations of the Flint Age. ••Herodotus on Cowls " would doubtless have been good reading; but the only early illustrations which we can recall dealing with the subject are Leech's, when the builders promised Mr, Briggs to cure his smoky chimneys with a" few little things " of types previous even to the great Kew Cowl Inquiry, and of a shape remarkably lasting, as any one may see who glances around from any top-story window in London. Few people will have realised up to now how much can be said about suoh intimate articles of domestic use. It shows both how specialised the world is, and how wide are its interests.
No doubt all this discussion will clear the air, which is what the cowls themselves are meant to do afterwards. Hot rooms and smoky chimneys are a great curse. It is possible that when a Royal Commission does sit,' or some one like Lord Kelvin, who has made the only perfect water- tap, begins .a fresh set of experiments, we shall see something satisfactory and permanent which no enthusiast can cavil at. The Duke of Bedford in his " History of a Great Estate " says truly that a smoky chimney adds a real trial to a cottager's life,—and it is extremely difficult to cure. But when the ideal cowl is evolved it is to be hoped that it will also be made either not hideous or really ornamental. The early Tudors covered their houses with vanes and terminals, which they painted and gilded to look fine, and very fine thejr looked. The air-cowls for ventilation might be made quite as handsome now, and Tudor building is highly popular. As for the chimney cowls, why should they look like a bent piece of asparagus or a tin nightcap ? They could easily be dragons spouting smoke, if they are wanted to be decorative, on houses where that kind of decoration is admissible, for dragons are used as water-spouts, and every one knows that "'up-to-date dragons," like up-to-date cowls, always breathe smoke or flame. This opens a field for the artistic mind, because there is no art history of Cowls, so far as we can discover. Norman chimneys probably smoked uncowled, as many of them were only square holes in the side of the wall. The Saxons apparently had no chimney-pots, which as additions to chimneys seem to have been a discovery of the days of Queen Anne. They figure largely in all street drawings from the days of Hogarth down- wards, but though they make for picturesqueness, the tin cowl never does. We have grown so used to it that we do not mind it, But considered in cold blood, and without profes- sional enthusiasm, it is a grisly excrescence.
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