384 ANNUAL KEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1913. 



evidently at a figure that enables the process to pay, because an ex- 

 tension of 9,000 kilowatts is being installed. 



A proposal that is being seriously considered at the present time 

 in India is the utilization of the water power from an irrigation dam 

 for the manufacture of manure. Owing to irrigation requirements, 

 electric energy will only be available for nine months in the year, 

 but that will not militate against the manufacture, as nitrogen fixa- 

 tion furnaces can be shut down and started up again at any time. 

 The use of water from irrigation dams to manufacture manures for 

 the farmers gives double benefit, and there are many places in the 

 colonies, and in Australia in particular, where such a scheme is 

 feasible. 



The Indian scheme is for 30,000 horsepower, and it is said that 

 37,000 tons of calcium cyanamide, containing 18 to 20 per cent nitro- 

 gen, can be produced in the nine months with that power. 



CONCLUSION. 



We, as a nation, are sadly behind Continental countries in the 

 exploitation of the electrometallurgical field. It is all very well to 

 start manufacturing " when the business has steadied down," but 

 generally by that time the best has been taken out of it. The pro- 

 cesses become ringed round with patent rights, for naturally the 

 master patents go to those who first commence to exploit a process 

 commercially. 



In the fixation of nitrogen nearly all the pioneer work of the 

 laboratory stage was done in this country by Dr. Priestly, Lord 

 Rayleigh, Sir William Crookes, McDougall and Howies, etc. The 

 actual exploitation on a commercial scale has, however, been effected 

 by a few Norwegian and German engineers, and the center of gi-avity 

 of electrical enterprise at the present time appears to be in Scandi- 

 navia. 



It is high time for the engineers and business men of this country 

 to go into the matter to see why it is we are lagging behind, and 

 especially to look into the question of cheap power supply. Above 

 everything else, a progressive industrial country wants cheap power, 

 whilst at the same time conserving its resoui'ces. We have carried 

 municipal trading in electricity further than other countries, but 

 have very little to show for it. There are a nimiber of municipal 

 plants run by committees of amateurs who know nothing about the 

 business, and who frequently have not the sense to pay decent salaries 

 to engineers who could tell them. What chance have such plants of 

 generating cheaply? 



The big things of electrical engineering are now being passed over 

 because we lack cheap power, and this is especially the case in electro- 

 metallurgy. Within the next generation or so all previous work in 

 electricity AAill look small against it. for the future is certainly for 

 the electrochemist and electrometallurgist. 



