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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



togetheiylike to like, and are being formed into 

 veins and beds of ore, etc., for future generations 

 to extract and again bring into use; but such 

 processes, if they exist at all, are assuredly very 

 slow. We scatter more rapidly than Nature 

 gathers. We are living beyond our income, and, 

 except as far as some few of the commoner ele- 

 ments are concerned, we must ultimately, in the 

 words of the old adage, " find the bottom of the 

 bag." 



Another form of waste consists in taking an 

 elementary substance, useful in its free state or 

 in some particular combination, and transmuting 

 it into compounds no longer capable of the same 

 applications. Of this class of waste the consump- 

 tion of coal may serve as the type. Carbon, and 

 certain compounds of carbon and hydrogen, com- 

 bine with oxygen, the main resulting product be- 

 ing carbonic acid, accompanied, in the case of the 

 hydrocarbons, with watery vapor. Now, carbonic 

 acid is certainly not useless in the economy of 

 Nature, being one of the most important ingre- 

 dients in the food of plants, but in our hands 

 it is what the old alchemists called a caput 

 moriuum — a residue which, economically speak- 

 ing, must be pronounced intractable. There is 

 no need to insist here upon the vast supply of this 

 gas poured daily into the atmosphere from the 

 combustion of coal and other fuel, from the res- 

 piration of animals, and from the fermentation 

 and putrefaction of organic matter — nor to show 

 how during ail these processes carbon, either 

 free or existing in some organic combination, is 

 being transformed into carbonic acid at an as- 

 tonishing rate. That at the same time the car- 

 bonic acid of the atmosphere is being decom- 

 posed by growing vegetation, its oxygen set free, 

 and its carbon assimilated — reconverted into or- 

 ganic compounds — is not capable of question. 

 But is fuel being generated as rapidly as it is 

 consumed ? Evidently not ; otherwise there would 

 hare been slight ground indeed for the outcry 

 which was so injudiciously raised about the pro- 

 spective exhaustion of our coal-fields. We say 

 " injudiciously raised," because the warnings were 

 at once seized hold of by the coal interest, and 

 employed as a weapon for striking an almost fa- 

 tal blow at our manufactures, our commerce, our 

 national wealth, and our domestic comfort. The 

 waste of carbon can be checked only by the sac- 

 rifice of that profligate source of warmth, the 

 "cheerful fire" — by the substitution, wherever 

 possible, of water-power and tidal power, and, in 

 brighter climates, of direct solar power, for steam- 

 power obtained by the use of fuel — and, where no 



such substitution is possible, by penalties upon 

 a consumption of coal greater per horse-power 

 than what can be proved practically necessary. 



Phosphorus is an element which we are wast- 

 ing in a different manner ; not by oxidation, for 

 it is most useful in combination with oxygen, but, 

 like the metals, by extreme comminution and 

 promiscuous distribution. Here the total supply 

 existing in Nature is small compared with that of 

 carbon. Though phosphorus plays, most fortu- 

 nately, a comparatively insignificant part in our 

 industrial operations, yet iu the chemistry of life 

 it is second in importance to none of the ele- 

 ments. Without phosphorus none, at any rate, of 

 the higher organisms, animal or vegetable, can 

 possibly exist. All our crops require a due sup- 

 ply of it, and, being the constituent of plant-food 

 of which most soils are soonest exhausted, it be- 

 comes, upon the principle laid down by Liebig, 

 the measure of their fertility. Among the meth- 

 ods in which this important element is wasted, 

 a prominent place belongs to the manufacture 

 of lucifer - matches. Three hundred thousand 

 pounds of phosphorus are made yearly in Eng- 

 land and France alone, nearly the whole of which 

 is absorbed in the match-manufacture. More 

 than ten years ago Wagner calculated the total 

 annual production for the whole of Europe at 

 about 540,000 pounds, requiring the consump- 

 tion of about 6,500,000 pounds .of bones, which 

 would otherwise be available as manure. If we 

 assume that the skeleton of an average man, 

 when dry, weighs twenty pounds, this weight 

 would furnish the bony framework for the bodies 

 of 325,000 human beings. As each match is 

 struck, its proportion of phosphorus is converted 

 into phosphoric acid. Such conversion does not 

 necessarily imply waste, since this is precisely the 

 form in which phosphorus enters into the food of 

 plants. But the phosphoric acid is scattered 

 abroad in such minute portions that we may well 

 question whether much of it will, in any reason- 

 able time, find its way to its legitimate place, our 

 fields and gardens. If we duly weigh how much 

 nutritive matter is thus in effect destroyed, and 

 how much potential life is prevented, we may 

 well question whether the invention of " lucifers " 

 has been quite as great a boon to mankind as is 

 sometimes represented by platform-orators, and 

 whether the power of instantaneously obtaining 

 a light at all times and in all places is not being, 

 to say the least, somewhat dearly purchased. It 

 is perfectly possible to make matches without 

 the consumption of any phosphorus at all — a fact 

 too much lost sight of and too little acted upon, 



