WOOD CHARCOAL ITS MANUFACTURE AND USE. 9 



of the products, and that except under very exceptional 

 circumstances it will not pay in this country to start new works." 



This does not preclude the possibility of increasing the present 

 output by already existing works and incidentally of increasing 

 the consumption of home-grown wood, and who knows to what 

 future developments this might not lead. — Hon. Ed. Trans.'\ 



Nobody who has worked with wood fires can have failed to 

 notice that under the ashes, if the fire goes out, will be found 

 charcoal. The ashes form a coating sufficiently impervious to 

 the air to allow the charred wood to cool without access of air. 

 The advantages of charcoal for culinary purposes would be so 

 obvious that the reduction of wood to charcoal in an analogous 

 way, but with less loss of wood, must have appealed to primeval 

 man at an early point in his life, after the discovery of fire. 

 As charcoal contains more heat-producing material than wood, 

 its use became imperative when the extraction of metals from 

 their ores was attempted, and when making the charcoal in big 

 masses condensation of part of the gases was bound to take 

 place on the portion farthest removed from the source of heat, 

 and tar would run out from the bottom of the heap. The anti- 

 septic properties of this tar, and especially that obtamed from 

 carbonising the cedar, were early recognised, and it was largely 

 used in embalming processes. Tar produced in this way from 

 coniferous woods, known as archangel tar, is still used in the 

 preparation of ropes as a preservative. 



We therefore have a natural sequence of events from an in- 

 telligently observed fact down to a certain point, but there is a 

 lapse of many centuries to the point where the composition of 

 the tar was examined into, and nearly two centuries elapsed 

 before advantage was taken of the results of this examination. 

 It was only in 1858 that Glauber demonstrated that the acid 

 contained in the distillate from wood had the same composition 

 as vinegar, and only in the beginning of the nineteenth century 

 was it discovered that methyl alcohol and acetone were also con- 

 stituents of the acid liquid. 



Another discovery relating to the utilisation of gases produced 

 in the carbonisation of wood was made by Phillipe Lebon, in 

 1767, namely, that they, or rather a part of them, could be 

 utilised as an illuminant. He started works under a contract 

 from the French Government to supply the tar produced to the 

 Navy as part of the process, but could not make a commercial 



