f>l SCIENCE IX SHORT CHAPTERS. 



After reviewing all that has been done, the conclusion that 

 London cannot become a clean, smokeless, and beautiful city, 

 so long as we are dependent upon open firegrates of anything 

 like ordinary construction, and fed with bituminous coal, is 

 inevitable. The general use of anthracite would effect the 

 desired change, but there is no hope of its becoming general 

 without legislative compulsion, and Englishmen will not submit 

 to this. 



One of the most hopeful schemes is that which was pro- 

 pounded a short time since by Mr. Scott Moncrieff. In- 

 stead of receiving our coal in its crude state, he proposes that 

 we should have its smoke - producing constituents removed 

 before it is delivered to us ; that it should be made into a sort 

 of artificial semi-anthracite at the gas-works by a process of 

 half distillation, which would take away not all the flaming gas 

 as at present, but that portion which is by far the richest to 

 the gas-maker and the most unmanageable in common fires. 

 We should thus have a material which, instead of being so 

 difficult to light as coke and anthracite, would light more 

 easily than crude coal, and at the same time our gas would have 

 far greater illuminating power, as it would all be drawn off 

 during the early period of distillation, when it is at its richest. 

 From a given quality of coal the difference would be as twenty- 

 four candles to sixteen. The ammonia which we now throw 

 into the air, the naphtha and coal-tar products which we waste, 

 are so valuable that they would pay all the expenses at the gas- 

 works and leave a handsome profit. We should thus get gas 

 so much better that two burners would do the work now 

 obtained from three. We should get all we require for light- 

 ing purposes and plenty more for heating ; the intermediate 

 profits of the coal merchant would be abolished, and our solid 

 fuel of far better quality could be supplied twenty or thirty per 

 cent, cheaper than at present, provided always that the gas 

 monopoly were abolished, " a consummation most devoutly to 

 be wished for. ' ' 



Mr. Moncrieff (who brought forward his scheme without 

 any company-mongering, or claims for patent rights) estimates 

 the saving to London at 2,125,000 per annum, over and 

 above the far greater saving that would result from the aboli- 

 tion of smoke. 



In connection with this scheme I may mention a fact that 

 has not been hitherto noted viz. that we have perforce and 

 unconsciously done a little in this direction already. Formerly 



