1901.] on Metals as Fuel. 509 



guage occurs in a poein * and seems to have been a misinterpretation 

 of the old French word fouaille, and was adopted in the belief that 

 sustenance for the body and food for the flames are synonymous. 

 Widening our view of metals by grouping them with fuels will be 

 acceptable, because fire and flame powerfully appeal to our thoughts. 

 We " kindle " enthusiasm, and add " fuel " to the fire of ambition — 

 we constantly use fire, flame and fuel as similes, and any prospect 

 of extending their use to us as such by enlisting metals in the service 

 will be welcome. An early Italian metallurgist, Vanoccio Biringuccio, 

 might not have thought so, for I find that, writing in the sixteenth 

 century, he quaintly devotes the last chapter of a work on metallurgy 

 to " Fires which burn and leave no ashes." f In this chapter he appeals 

 to envy, hatred, malice and other products of a kindled imagination, 

 and traces their analogies to fuel and flame, but he speedily takes 

 leave of his readers in alarm at the prospect such a treatment of the 

 subject presents. 



The burning of aluminium as fuel gives us sapphires and rubies 

 in the place of ashes, and metallic fuel is burnt, not by the air above 

 but by the oxygen derived from the earth beneath, as it occurs in the 

 red and yellow oxides to which our rocks and cliffs owe their colour 

 and their beauty. 



[W. K.-A.] 



* ' Cceur de Lion,' loth Century. 



t ' De la Pirotechnia,' 1540, p. 167. (Venice.) ' Del fuocho cbe consurua et 

 non fa cenere.' 



