934 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



This amounts to a substitution of a solid, substance for the water in 

 Carre's intermittent apparatus, and its efficiency is less, owing to the 

 smaller quantity of ammonia which can be operated on in the same 

 apparatus. "A given quantity of chloride of silver AvoiUd produce only 

 about the thirtieth of its bulk of liquid ammonia, and a fifth part of its 

 bulk of ice at 0° C. In order to produce a kilogram of ice, it would be 

 necessary to employ 27 J kilograms of the chloride ; and this supposes 

 the operation to be conducted with no loss. Water, on the other hand, 

 dissolves, at moderate temperature, seven hundred times its volume of 

 the gas, a quantity capable of producing two-thirds of its bulk and half 

 its weight of liquid ammonia, and of converting into ice more than three 

 times its own bulk. A kilogram of water employed as a solvent of am- 

 moniacal gas will thus suffice to produce three kilograms of ice." (Bar- 

 nard.) 



M. Ch. Telber covered by patents, in France and England, an inven- 

 tion which he afterwards patented in America on the 8th of March, 1870, 

 and which has proved, especially by the action of a host of infringers, 

 to be the most ready and economical -plan of taking advantage in a re- 

 frigerating apparatus of the unequalled heat-absorbing power, at mod- 

 erate pressures, of the volatilization of a liquid. His claim is for " the 

 use or application, for the inu^iose of generating artificial cold, of jjure 

 ammoniacal gas liquefied by means of mechanical compression, substan- 

 tially as described." He used the pump and condenser described in let- 

 ters-patent 85,719, issued January 5, 1879 ; and while TelUer has con- 

 tinued to give the x)reference to methyUc ether in France, this has been 

 simply due to the greater facilities for pumping this ether. The benefits 

 to be derived by the use of anhydrous ammonia have failed of being- 

 realized, owing to the practical difficulties of pumping it by reciprocating- 

 pumps — difficulties which are only in a lesser degree exx^erienced, but 

 nevertheless encountered, in pumj^ing other volatile agents. 



In the month of May, 1877, M. Tellier issued a circular in which he 

 propounds the merits of a new absorption machine for the use of tri- 

 methylamine in producing cold. The apparatus is similar to the am- 

 moma,-absorptio)i machine, and here Tellier remarks that, without renew- 

 ing the strife of seventeen years previously, he has a right to use his 

 own invention, patented on the 25th July, 1860, as against Carre, whose 

 I)atent dated 24th August, 1800, both patents being now public property. 



Trimethylamine is a peculiar ammoniacal compound — a crude organic 

 ammonia in a sense, contained in large quantity in herring-pickle, and 

 to this it gives its peculiar odor. It is, like aU agents of great value as 

 refrigerants, readily soluble in water, and boils at 49°.C Fahr. Moderate 

 heat, such as that of exhaust steam, readily distils it, and the ijressure 

 in the liquefier amounts to about one atmosphere. Mr. Camille Vincent, 

 a distinguished chemist, conceived the idea of treating in close vessels 

 the residue of the distillation of molasses, and from this residue he has 

 obtained an abundant suj^ply of trimethylamine. It is not a little remark- 



