rising from the floor. There are not many rooms constructed on a plan so favourable to the admission of fresh air—but it has some serious defects. 1. The air would enter in broad and partial currents. 2. It would not reach the angular portions of the room. 3. The vitiated air might rise above the apertures, and so accumulate without the means of escape.

Now, suppose the same room to have its apertures at eight feet from the floor, and so to reach the ceiling. The escape of the vitiated air might then take place—if not prevented by a counter-current. But whence comes the fresh air for the occupants? There is no direct provision for its admission. The elevated apertures are utterly insufficient for that purpose; and the perpetual requisite is no otherwise afforded than by the occasional opening of a door!

It being thus established that the same apertures can never effectually serve for light and ventilation, I propose with regard to reading-rooms, lecture-rooms, and school-rooms, which require accommodation for books, maps, charts, and drawings, rather than a view of external objects, that the windows should be placed in the upper part of the room—that the admission of fresh air should be provided for by ducts near the floor—and the escape of the vitiated air by openings in, or on a level with, the ceiling.

The number of windows, and their size, must depend on the size of the room. If windows are to admit light only, a smaller number may be sufficient, and they may not be required on more than one side; a circumstance which recommends the plan proposal, as we can seldom have windows on each side of a room, or even on two of its opposite sides, but may devise a method of so admitting air.

Rejecting the use of windows as a means of ventilation, and rejecting artificial currents of every description, I propose the substitution of air-ducts of incorrodible iron, to be inserted horizontally in the walls of at least two opposite sides of the room, within three feet from the floor, and at intervals of about four feet. The ducts to be six or eight inches in diameter, according to the size of the room. The external orifice of each duct to be formed of perforated zinc, and the internal orifice, which may be trumpet-shaped, of

perforated zinc or wire-gauze, with a device which would serve to adjust the quantum of air according to circumstances, and to exclude it at night. By such contrivances, while the offensive and noxious currents which proceed from wide openings would be obviated, the supplies of fresh air would always be equal to the demand. The purest air may not be accessible—but, as Franklin says, "no common air from without is so unwholesome as the air within a close room."

The escape of the vitiated air requires less consideration. If the ceiling of the room be flat, with another room above it, the upper part of each window, in the shape of a narrow slip, might be made to act as a sort of safety-valve; but if the windows are on one side only, corresponding openings should be made on the opposite side, so that there would almost always be, more or less, a leeward opening. A vaulted ceiling, without any other room over it, seems to be the most desirable form, as the vitiated air would rise and collect towards its centre, where there could be no counter-current to impede its egress.

It is the union of those two objects, the admission of fresh air and the riddance of the vitiated air, skilfully and economically effected, which forms the circle of the science of ventilation.

I have restricted myself to the means of ventilation, which is requisite at all seasons of the year, but am quite aware that warmth, or a temperature above that of the external air, is sometimes indispensable to health and comfort, and therefore to the free exercise of the faculties. I believe, however, that the means proposed for the admission of fresh air might also be made available for the admission of heated air, and that either description of air might be admitted independently of the other, or both descriptions simultaneously.

A vast increase of reading-rooms, lecture-rooms, and school-rooms, may be safely predicted, and as the due ventilation of such rooms is a project of undeniable importance, I hope this note, eccentric in form, but earnest as to its purpose, may invite the remarks of others more conversant with architecture and physics—either in correction, or confirmation, or extension, of its general principles and details.

Bolton Corney.

The Terrace, Barnes,
28th April, 1854.

THE HOUSE OF RUSSELL, OR DU ROZEL.

At a time when the readers of "N. & Q.," and the world at large, have been hearing of the gift of a bell to a village church in Normandy, so pleasantly and readily made by the princely house of Russell, far exceeding the modest solicitation of the curé for assistance by way of a subscription, in remembrance of the Du Rozels having left their native patrimony in France to share the fortunes of the Conqueror in Old England, the following particulars may not be uninteresting.

Mr. Wiffen, when compiling his elaborate Historical Memoirs of the House of Russell, from the Time of the Norman Conquest, had occasion to make some inquiries respecting a statement put forth by a M. Richard Seguin, a rich dealer in merceries and wooden shoes at Vire, in the department of Calvados; who, it appears, had a mania for appropriating the literary labours of others as his own, and, in fact, is stigmatised as a voleur littéraire by M. Quérard, in his curious work entitled Les Supercheries Littéraires Dévoilées. Mr. Wiffen wished to ascertain M. Seguin's authority for affirming in some work, the name of which is not given by M. Quérard, but which is probably the Histoire du Pays d'Auge et des Evêques Comtes de Lisieux, Vire, 1832, that the Du Rozels were descended from Bertrand de Briquebec. M. Seguin's reply is contained in the following letter from M. Le Normand of Vire, to whom Mr. Wiffen had written, requesting him to obtain M. Seguin's authority for his statement:

"J'ai vu M. Séguin, et je lui ai demandé d'où provenaient les renseignements dont il s'était servi pour dire dans son ouvrage que les Du Rozel descendaient des Bertrand de Bricquebec. Il m'a répondu qu'il l'ignorait; qu'il avait eu en sa possession une grande quantité de Copies de Chartres et d'anciens titres qui lui avaient fourni les matériaux de son histoire, mais qu'il ne savait nullement d'où elles provenaient."—Historical Memoirs, &c., vol. i. p. 5. n. 1.

The fact appears to be, that M. Seguin had obtained possession, through marriage, of a quantity of MSS., and was in the habit of printing them as his own works. Some of them had belonged to an Abbé Lefranc, one of the priests who were murdered in the diabolical massacre of the clergy in the prisons of Paris in September, 1792; and others of the MSS. had been the property of a M. Noël Deshayes, Curé de Compigni, whose Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire des Evêques de Lisieux, were published by Seguin as his own, but altered and disfigured under the title of—

"Histoire du Pays d'Auge et des Evêques Comtes de Lisieux, contenant des Notions sur l'Archéologie, les Droits, Coutumes, Franchises et Libertés du Bocage et de la Normandie; Vire, Adam, 1832."

The MS., however, from which Seguin printed his forgery, turns out to have been but a copy; the original having since been discovered by M. Formeville in the library of the Séminaire of Evreux, and is now about to be published by that gentleman (see Supercheries, tom. iv., Paris, 1852). By a just retribution, M. Formeville is one of the literary men to whom Sequin refused to point