20 
of Burnley. He was not defending the manufacturers, but he 
contended that the Health Committee ought to obtain all the 
information they possibly could on the matter before they began 
issuing summonses broadcast. The manufacturers would only 
be too delighted to fall in with any suggestion the Health Com- 
mittee might make in regard to the abatement of smoke. 
Mr. Fletcher hereupon explained the workings of his stoker. 
Mr. Thompson said the stoker which Mr. Fletcher had spoken 
about was very similar to one made by a Mr. McDougall, a noted 
chemist, who spent a great deal of time and money in order to 
perfect that method of mechanical stoking. The stokers on the 
plan were almost identical with McDougall’s. His (Mr. 
Thompson’s) experience was not confined to one colliery or one 
class of coal, but it was found in most cases that the stoker was 
a failure. In Burnley they were at a disadvantage as compared 
with Bolton, Wigan and Yorkshire. Burnley coal had more 
bitumen in it, and a stoker such as had been described would be 
impracticable. 
Mr. Rawlinson said that until smoke could be consumed 
economically, they would never get the evil entirely remedied. 
Mr. Fletcher had not addressed himself to the question of the 
consumption of smoke economically. Liverpool was a smokeless 
town but they did not find the health of the people improve 
compared with the smoky Lancashire towns. ‘The death rate of 
Liverpool (31), was very considerably above the death rate of 
Burnley (25), although the latter was a smoking town. The 
stoker Mr. Fletcher had used could not have been as great a 
success as he represented it to be, or else it would have been 
more used. 
In reply the lecturer said the putting in of his apparatus would 
not require more boiler room. It would do more work and con- 
sume less coal. 
This epitome of the lecture and the discussion has been abbre- 
viated from the account given in the Burnley Gazette of Wed- 
nesday, Jan. 30. 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MEMORY. 
By the REV. M. MAHER, S.J., M.A. February 5th, 1889. 
The psychologist seeks to analyse the phenomena of the mind, 
and to establish the character of the principle from which they 
flow. Memory involves three elements—the act of retention in 
the mind of past experiences or events, the act of reproduction 
in consciousness, and the act of recognition—so that memory 
is the faculty by which we retain, reproduce, and recognise our 
