This book supplies a growing want of busy times, when so many are prevented by the struggles of business from sitting down to the consecutive systematic study of a formal treatise. In the writing of science chapters within this book, the highest literary ambition of the author has always been to combine clearness and simplicity with some attempt at philosophy. Each chapter addresses a separate topic in science. Among them are: concert-room acoustics, origin of soap, oiling the waves, frost in water pipes and building materials, cooking stoves, consumption of smoke, air of stove-heated rooms, ventilation by open fireplaces, domestic ventilation, origin of lunar volcanoes, solidity of the Earth, formation of coal, the solar eclipse of 1871, meteoric astronomy, the "Great Ice Age," the barometer and the weather, the chemistry of bog reclamation, aerial exploration of the arctic regions, limits of coal supply, coloring of green tea, luminous paint, the corrosion of building stones, homes gardens for smoky towns, and solids, liquids, and gases.