adapted to the construction of a pair of cottages with three bedrooms in one and two in the other.

No. 19, Plate VIII. is a plan of a pair of cottages, one of which has a living-room and scullery on the ground-floor, and three upstairs bedrooms, and the other has a kitchen, parlour, and scullery on the ground-floor, and two upstairs bedrooms. Or, as has been said before, the parlour may be called a bedroom, and used as such. Both cottages in this plan are large enough for any family; they are adapted for building in rows as well as in detached pairs; the size of the rooms can be altered considerably, without altering the arrangement of the plans, and they are useful, and (in proportion to the accommodation they contain) economical cottages. Nevertheless, the same remark applies to these plans as to Nos. 18 and 19, that they are, no doubt, capable of much improvement, and that it is to be hoped that the attention of persons interested in cottage improvement will be directed to this mode of con

structing cottages more than it has hitherto been.

There is one improvement in this pair which will occur to most of my readers who are interested in the construction of cottages: the making a passage-room of the scullery, instead of making a separate passage through the house, would make the plan much simpler and much better. The pantry would be much larger, and both the pantry and scullery would be a better shape; indeed, with this alteration, a foot or eighteen inches could very well be spared from the projecting part at the back, and then by placing the kitchen lengthwise across the building, the two cottages may be brought within four walls. The kitchen might be made 15 ft. by 10 ft., and the parlour 8 ft. 6 in. wide, which would still leave 6 ft. for the width of the scullery, and the plan would then be a very simple one.

CHAPTER III.

ON DETAILS OF CONSTRUCTION.

THE usual way of securing a dry floor to a cottage is by digging out the earth so that the floor shall be a foot or eighteen inches above the soil; the floors are laid on sleepers, which are laid on half-brick walls. In all such cases, where floors are laid hollow, care should be taken that there be a thorough ventilation under them, otherwise they will be liable to dry rot. It is not sufficient to put ventilators in the outer walls only, but there ought to be openings also left in all the walls under the floor, so that the air may pass freely through the whole of the foundations. Damp is kept from rising in the walls by laying on them, just above the ground, a coating

of gas-tar thickened either with pitch or asphalt, or with a little dry fresh-slaked lime, or by a course of slates, or by two or three courses of bricks laid in cement. Whichever of these be adopted, the damp course ought to be just below the floor.

Besides the above manner of laying floors, they may also very well be laid solid; and even wooden floors will not be damp or liable to dry rot, if this be done in the following manner: At the level of the ground, or, still better, a few inches above it (in which case the whole space within the foundation walls must be made level with earth or gravel beaten solid), cover over the whole area of the cottage, walls and all, with gastar thickened with pitch, asphalt, or lime, about a quarter of an inch thick; on this lay the flooring joists, and fill up between them with dry earth, gravel, or sand, finishing off exactly level with the upper side of the joists with a layer of fine sand; and lay the floor on this. There are some advantages in this plan. Thinner floor boards

make an equally good floor, and, if properly done, it is always perfectly dry. I have found this kind of floor answer well in a schoolroom, one of its advantages being, that it is much less noisy than a boarded floor laid hollow.

In some parts of the country it is usual to floor all the ground-floor rooms with brick or tiles, or in parts of the country where they are abundant, with flags. There is no objection to these, if they be so laid as to be quite secure from damp, and I know of no better way of effecting this, than the plan I have just mentioned for boarded floors.

In some parts of England plaster floors are also still sometimes used for cottages, but I think that a well-laid brick floor is a better one, and not more expensive. The usual price for either is from Is. 4d. to Is. 8d. per square yard.

The skirting for these floors is usually done in

cement.

The walls of a cottage may be built of stone, or of brick, or of mud, or partly of one and partly of another. The latter of these is not