934 EEPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



This amounts to a substitution of a solid substance for tlic water in 

 Carre's intermittent apparatus, and its efficiency is less, owing- to the 

 smaller quantity of ammonia which can be operated on in the same 

 apparatus. "A given quantity of chloride of silver would produce only 

 about the thirtieth of its bulk of liquid ammonia, and a fifth part of its 

 bulk of ice at 0^ C. In order to produce a kilogram of ice, it would be 

 necessary to employ 27 J kilograms of the chloride ; and" this supposes 

 the operation to be conducted with no loss. Water, on the other hand, 

 dissolves, at moderate temperature, seven hundred times its volume of 

 the gas, a quantity capable of producing two-thkds of its bulk and half 

 its weight of liquid ammonia, and of converting into ice more than thi'ee 

 times its own bulk. A kilogram of water emxiloyed as a solvent of am- 

 mouiacal gas will thus suiflce to produce three kilograms of ice." (Bar- 

 nard.) 



M. Ch. Tellier covered by patents, in France and England, an inven- 

 tion which he afterwards patented in America on ihe 8th of March, 1870, 

 and which has i^roved, especially by the action of a host of infi-iugers, 

 to be the most ready and economical i)lan of taking advantage in a re- 

 frigerating apparatus of the unequalled heat-absorbing power, at mod- 

 erate pressures, of the volatilization of a liquid. His claim is for " the 

 use or application, for the pm^pose of generating artificial cold, of pure 

 ammoniacal gas hquefled by means of mechanical compression, substan- 

 tially as described." lie used the pump and condenser described in let- 

 ters-patent 85,719, issued January- 5, 1879 ; and while TelHer has con- 

 tinued to give the preference to methylic ether in France, this has been 

 simply due to the greater facilities for pumicing this ether. The benefits 

 to be derived by the use of anhydrous ammonia have failed of being 

 realized, owing to the practical difiiculties of pumping it by reciprocating- 

 pumps — difllculties which are only in a lesser degree exi^erieuced, but 

 nevertheless encountered, in pumping other volatile agents. 



In the month of May, 1877, M. Tellier issued a circular in which he 

 propounds the merits of a new absorption machine for the use of tri- 

 methyiamine Id producing cold. The apparatus is similar to the am- 

 moma-absGijytion machine, and here Tellier remarks that, without renew- 

 ing the strife of seventeen years previously, he has a right to use his 

 own invention, patented on the 25th July, ISGO, as against Carre, whose 

 X^atent dated 24th August, 1800, both jiatents being now i^ublic i^roperty. 



Trimethylamine is a peculiar amujoniacal compound — a crude organic 

 ammonia in a sense, contained in large quantity in herring-piclde, and 

 to this it gives its peculiar odor. It is, like aU agents of great value as 

 refrigerants, readily soluble in water, and boils at 49o.O Fahr. Moderate 

 heat, such as that of exhaust steam, readily distils it, and the pressure 

 in the liquefier amounts to about one atmosphere. Mr. Camille Vincent, 

 a distinguished chemist, conceived the idea of treating in close vessels 

 the residue of the (^listillation of molasses, and from this residue he has 

 obtained an abundant supi)ly of trimethylamine. It is not a httle remark- 



