28 ILLINOIS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 



dustrial establishments, not including the railroads. 

 Now, if the inventors of domestic heating appliances had 

 set out to assemble an inefficient lot of devices, they could 

 hardly have surpassed their present accomplishment. 

 They are especially eifective in distilling off the volatile 

 constituents of the fuel in the most suitable form. I use 

 the word advisedly and mth a deformed spelling. I 

 mean to say, therefore, they are the most suitable forms 

 for smudging up the flues and passageways of the stove 

 or heater and all creation outside when the products of 

 combustion and ^«o;i-combustion leave the chimney. The 

 factories maj make a good deal of smoke, the evidence of 

 it is .pronounced, but in the aggregate the domestic chim- 

 nej^s are the worst offenders. They work over-time, even 

 24 hours in the day. If they ever slumber or sleep that 

 is the very stage of their highest effectiveness in the mat- 

 ter of smoke and soot production. 



NoAV, as a matter of fact, the kitchen stove or the 

 basement furnace is doing as v\^ell as can be expected. It 

 has not the white hot fire or the mechanical stoker or the 

 extended combustion chamber of the factory furnace, and 

 indeed never can approach those conditions which in the 

 well-appointed manufacturing establishment burns its 

 coal with the minimum amount of smoke, and so we come 

 back to our starting point, namely, the purpose which 

 seems the logical course, to provide from Ilinois coals a 

 fuel which has had the smoke producing constituents re- 

 moved. Constituents which may be worth only 5 cents 

 as fuel, but probably w^orth 5 dollars in some other form. 

 If this result can be made to work out in a practical way, 

 as well as the laboratory accomplishments would seem to 

 indicate, the work will have been well worth the doing. 



THE IRWIN EXPEDITION ABOUT CERRO DE 

 PASCO AND LAKE TITICACA 



William Ray Allen, Univeksity or Illinois 



In a recent number of "Science" Prof. C. H. Eigen- 

 man^ gave a general outline of the Irwin Expedition of 



^ Science, August 1, 1919. 



