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most intelligent of our grandfathers’ time could by any chance 
re-appear amongst us to-day, we might conduct them through 
the different manufactories mentioned, and point with a certain 
amount of pride to the very wonderful and valuable substances 
now being produced from matter they only knew as waste—the 
mineral wool, glass ware, pottery, cement, bricks, and fertilizer 
derived from furnace slag; our Russia leather pocket book 
made from our cast-off boots and shoes ; the paper, carpets, 
candles, medicine, phosphorus, margarine, buttons, soap, toys, 
wall-papers, and many other now necessary articles produced 
from house refuse; the hundreds of useful products from 
coal-tar and liquor; and the staple articles of trade pro- 
duced from the once devastating gases from chemical works, 
which they poured forth into the atmosphere with so fatal 
an effect on life and vegetation. In answer to their wondering 
question “‘ How can these things be ?”’ we say they are the 
the result of a more enlightened policy, which has stimulated 
a general desire for knowledge, encouraged great minds to 
ponder over and gradually unravel the mysteries of nature, 
and has fostered research in all branches of science. If 
the word ‘“‘ waste’’ so far as it applies to our industrial pro- 
ducts has not already become obsolete, it is becoming more and 
more so, and we may thank principally the chemists of this and 
previous generations for teaching us how to recover and render 
valuable innumerable substances which, in their ignorance, 
our forefathers threw away. Everything has its use, and can 
be made to serve a useful purpose ; nothing is really waste. 
I hope I have convinced you that the title at the head of this 
paper is not a misnomer ; that even refuse is not altogether 
devoid of romance if we can only follow the course of its 
career, and that few of our industrial operations are so romantic 
as those immediately concerned in the working up of dirt.” 
>D><oke< 

