The Comins School-house was built in 1856, and remodelled in 1869. It has thirteen rooms. Its scholars are largely of foreign nationality, Irish and German.

The building is heated by steam, each room having its independent radiator placed in a cold-air flue in the basement, and managed by the janitor; this cold-air flue is too small for the supply of a sufficient quantity of fresh air to the room to which it leads. The corridors are warmed partly by the iron smoke-pipe which passes through them, and partly by steam-radiators.

The method of foul-air escape, as devised by the architect and carried out by the building mechanics, is as follows: Each room has a wooden air-shaft, whose bottom is at the floor, and whose open top is in the attic of the building, in company with others of its series. The single entranceopening of this duct is at the floor, the opening as well as the shaft itself being too small. The design is that the foul air shall make its way from the room through the air-shaft, and emerging close under the foot of the rafters at the corner of the attic shall escape instinctively (?) through a small wooden louvred ventilator placed like a cupola in the centre of the main roof. The attic thus becomes (theoretically) a common receiver for foul air, and the louvre box, scarcely five feet square, is charged with the extraction of all the emanations from the seven hundred scholars whom the building accommodates. The table shows how thoroughly these devices fail to accomplish their purpose. Another fact in this connection will explain the relative position of the Comins School in regard to unwholesomeness. Rooms 3, 4, 7, 8, 11 and 13 are in a part of the building recently constructed; the roof of this part has much less pitch than the roof of the older portion, in the centre of which is the louvred ventilator above alluded to. Nevertheless, the foul-air shafts of these rooms open in the corners of the attic close by the foot of the low rafters, and in such a situation relatively to the

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ventilator that a current toward the latter is out of the question. Hence Room 4, which is on the ground-floor, has in its atmosphere, when door and windows are shut, five times the amount of carbonic acid which it ought to have.

The weather on the day of the inspection was heavy and threatening. The barometer registered 29.64. The thermometer was at 36°. The wind was north-east, and very light.

The apparatus for the ventilation of this building is like that described in connection with the Eliot School-house, foul-air shafts, one in each room, with floor and ceiling openings; the whole system conducting the foul air to the receivers in the attic, and thence to the ventilators on the roof. The teachers do not rely on these ducts to keep their rooms wholesome, but the windows are open at all seasons. Four furnaces supply heat to the class-rooms; and a portable furnace warms the lower hall. The smoke-pipes are to be seen in the corridors, but they are not utilized for ventilation.

The corridors are narrow, and the outside clothing of the children is hung there, as in the Brimmer School.

On the day of the inspection the thermometer registered 25°; the barometer stood at 30.27. The weather was threatening, the sky being overcast, the wind north-east and light.

The Chapman School-house was built in 1850, and contains ten rooms.