, and rarely rises to 20 per cent. An ordinary
bedroom will be say 12 ft. X 15 ft. X 10 ft., and will therefore
contain 1,800 cubic feet of air, and such a room would be lighted by a
single bats-wing burner consuming not more than four cubic feet of gas
per hour. Suppose now the inmate of that room retires to bed in such a
condition of mental aberration that he prefers to blow out the gas
rather than take the ordinary course of turning it off--a process, by
the way, of putting out gas which is decidedly easier in theory than
in practice, especially in his presumed mental condition--you would
have in one hour the 1,800 cubic feet of gas in the room mixed with
four fifths of a cubic foot of carbon monoxide--the carbureted water
gas being supposed to contain 20 per cent.--or 0.04 per cent. In such
a room, however, if the doors and windows were absolutely air tight,
and there was no fireplace, diffusion through the walls would change
the entire air once an hour, so that the percentage would not rise
above 0.04; while in any ordinary room imperfect workmanship and an
open chimney would change it four times in the hour, reducing the
percentage to 0.
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