president's address — SECTION B. 61 



paramount with the metallurgist. The distinction of having placed 

 metallurgy on a firm chemical footing in the light of the teachings of 

 these authorities belongs to a Freiberg professor of chemistry and 

 metallirrgy, W. A. Lampadius (1772-1844), who, having in the course 

 of a long and busy academic life, hved through the whole sequence of 

 doubt, half-acceptance, and final unreserved allegiance to Lavoisierean 

 ideas, no doubt much more acutely felt the practical change effected 

 by the new thought than do any of his eclectic compeers of to-day. 

 He wrote voluminously on the subjects of both the theoretical and th; 

 practical metallurgy of all the metals, and his writings also include 

 treatises on atmospherology — evidence of the keen originative thought 

 he was disposed to devote to pneumatic phenomena. He gives greater 

 prominence to the combustibility of the metals and their usefulness 

 as sources of heat, even in the blast-furnace, particularly in connection 

 with the ordinary sulphides, than any authority save the more recent 

 writers. He speaks definitely (1817) and clearly of the combustion 

 of the constituents of iron pyrites and galena, &c., in the older pjTitic 

 smelting method (Roharbeit), quite distinct from roasting or calcining, 

 and refers to the metals and the metalloid as jointly acting as fuels, though 

 occasionally at the unavoidable risk of the scorification of the metal 

 to be saved. He thus evinces a more thoughtful emancipation from 

 the trammels of alchemistic philosophy, which interpreted all fuels 

 as " sulphurs," than do many moderns, who ignore the dominant 

 thermal effect of the accompanying metal. Judging by the text- 

 books his immediate followers do not appear to have remembered this 

 important point later than the forties ; and in the subsequent hand- 

 books, before the early seventies, one also seeks in vain for any reference 

 to the fuel qualities of sulphides under circumstances of more rapid 

 oxidation, such as are exemplified in blast-furnace treatment. The 

 elimination of sulphur in that furnace, though empirically known to 

 the profession, cuts no figure in the standard treatises until the imita- 

 tive application of the Bessemer idea to sulphides again gives it a 

 certain prominence, which has since become greatly accentuated. 



Both natural and artificial sulphides, i.e., mattes, claim the atten- 

 tion of the metallurgist almost to a greater degree than the oxides, 

 and their consideration is an all-important preamble to his schemes 

 of treatment. A large proportion of smelting operations, especially 

 in copper, is devoted to the production of artificial sulphides, simply 

 for reasons of convenience, for the purpose of achieving a clean mechani- 

 cal separation of the metal-bearing portion of the original ores from 

 the valueless portion, and the utilisation of sulphur as a medium for 

 the collection of the metal in a convenient form is particularly practised 

 in cases where there is a superabundant formation of slag. This 

 sulphurisation of the metal is then followed up by oxidation, mainly 

 for the purpose of assisting the eUmination of the worthless elements 

 which accompany the metal to be recovered into its combination with 

 sulphur, and which lower the tenor of the matte thus formed. Chief 

 among these elements is iron, ordinarily speaking, the third constituent 

 of mattes, in addition to sulphur and copper. 



