212 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



1. The use of attritive force, or of the mechanical reduction of 

 stony materials by their own attrition ; the working of this prin- 

 ciple is illustrated by the moving' sands of the desert, and by the 

 mutual action of the sea-shore pebbles. 2. By the new system the 

 dust of sulphur and of sulphides, and of all inflammable stones 

 and rocks, is burned, floated upon currents of air through heated 

 chambers; by it stones are converted into powerful fuels, whereby 

 the iron, sulphur, phosphorus, arsenic, and other combustibles, 

 are made heat generators of nearly equal power with carbon 

 itself, developing all the heat of which they are practically capable 

 at the moment and at the place where they are needed, showing 

 as great a step in the thermotic as in the mechanical branch of 

 metallurgy. 3. Sulphurous gas is thoroughly applied as a metal- 

 lurgic solvent as general in its application as sulphuric acid. Ber- 

 zelius claimed that the quantity of sulphuric acid used by a nation 

 would be the measure of its civilization : this must now be modi- 

 fied by another observation, namely, that the extent of the metal- 

 lurgic industry of a nation may be measured in part by the quan- 

 tity of gaseous sulphur used ; the enemy or demon of the metals, 

 sulphur, is made the chief instrument of their reduction. 4. 

 Chemical agents are so employed as to continually recover them 

 in the process itself; chlorine, the most powerful agent of solu- 

 tion, is used and recovered with only the losses of manipulation. 

 In the mechanical division tangential force is substituted for grav- 

 ity ; in the thermotic, rapid and instantaneous alembic and stilla- 

 tory processes are combined with the combustion of iron and other 

 substances not hitherto clearly recognized as fuels; in the Chemi- 

 cal, a new solvent has been made to take its place at the head of 

 metallurgic solvents. 



He gave details on some of the interesting chemical results of 

 these processes : as the absorption of sulphurous gas by the bath 

 of cold water, forming a sulphite of water or sulphurous acid ; 

 the intense heat produced by the combustion of native sulphides 

 of copper and iron, the intensity of the combustion being in pro- 

 portion to its rapidity and the minute division of the particles; a 

 cubic inch of solid sulphide may be so divided by the machinery 

 used as to offer 300 square fe^et of surface to the action of radiated 

 heat ; the action of sulphurous gas upon the solutions of the 

 chlorides, and 'the effect of the addition of chloride of calcium to 

 the briii) 7 bath. Upon the fact of the powerful absorption of sul- 

 phurous gas by the chlorides of the metals rests the entire chem- 

 ical system of the new branch of metallurgy. 



From lack of economy in reduction of ores, it is estimated that 

 the aggregate loss on the production of bullion in this country for 

 the present year will reach the sum of 25,000,000 dollars. 



Prominent among the causes of loss is the inability hitherto to 

 burn fine and waste coal in these processes. In relation to this 

 subject the "American Railway Times" has a long article in a 

 recent issue., of which the following is an abstract: 



" The present loss of coal is, in point of fact, a greater evil than 

 the national debt of Great Britain or the United States. It ap- 

 pears hardly credible, and yet \ve cannot refuse the statistical evi- 



