224 PROCEEDINGS OF THE COTTESWOLD CLUB 



vegetable wool are not attacked by moths ; it maintains an 

 even degree of heat, is a sure preventive against 

 humidity, and is especially recommended for rheumatic 

 patients ; and here moreover we have an instance of a 

 factory which absolutely and entirely consumes and 

 utilizes the whole of its waste. 



There is in Paris a large manufactory where the cobs 

 of maize or Indian corn are steeped in tar and resin and 

 sold in bundles as fire lighters. They are sold at three or 

 four a halfpenny, and the sales amount to ^^8,000 yearly. 



Every waste of the precious metals is most carefully 

 collected. A jeweller's leather, old and well worn, is 

 worth a guinea, and what are called "sweeps" or the dust 

 collected in the leathern receptacle suspended under 

 every working jeweller's bench, form a regular article of 

 trade. A worker in the precious metals can always 

 obtain a new waistcoat for an old one, in consequence of 

 the valuable dust adhering to it. 



In the very centre of the large tobacco warehouses in 

 the London Docks there is a large kiln, familiarly known 

 as the "Queen's Pipe," which consumes as waste an 

 enormous quantity of articles. The fire of the furnace 

 never goes out, day or night, from year to year. What- 

 ever is forfeited and is too bad for sale is doomed to the 

 kiln, except the greater quantity of the tea, which having 

 once set the chimney on fire, is now rarely burnt. Strange 

 are the things that sometimes comes to this perpetually 

 burning furnace. At one time there were 900 Australian 

 hams, at another 13,000 pairs of condemned French 

 gloves. The ashes of the kiln are collected and sold ; in 

 these gold and silver are often found ; sometimes there 

 have been numbers of foreign watches, which, professing 

 to be genuine gold watches, but discovered to be impostors 

 have been ground up in a mill and then thrown in here. 



The waste paper, twine, old quills, S:c., of the Govern- 

 ment offices in London, sold under contract, realize 

 ^10,000 a vear. 



