266 SCIENCE IX SHORT CHAPTERS. 



woollen manufacture. But he did not make his fortune all at once. 

 On the contrary, he failed to pay expenses, for in his calculations he 

 had omitted to allow for the fact that the soap liquor is much diluted 

 and therefore he must carry much water in order to obtain a little 

 fat. This cost of carriage ruined his enterprise, and his works were 

 offered for sale. 



The purchaser was a shrewd Yorkshireman, who then was a dealer 

 in second-hand boilers, tanks, and other iron wares. When he was 

 about to demolish the works, the Frenchman took him into confi- 

 dence, and told the story of his failure. The Yorkshireman said 

 Jittle, but thought much ; and having finally assured himself that the 

 carriage was the only difficulty, he concluded, after the manner of 

 Mahomet, that if the mountain would not come to him, he might go 

 to the mountain ; and then made an offer of partnership on the basis 

 that the Frenchman should do the chemistry of the work, and that he 

 (the Yorkshireman) should do the rest. 



Accordingly, he went to the works around, and offered to contract 

 for the purchase of all their soapsuds, if they would allow him to put 

 up a tank or two on their premises. This he did ; the acid was 

 added, the fat rose to the surface, was skimmed off, and carried, loith- 

 out the water, to the central works, where it was melted down, and, 

 with very little preparation, was converted into " cold-neck, grease, " 

 and " hot-neck grease," and used, besides, for other lubricating pur- 

 poses. The Frenchman's science and skill, united with the York- 

 shireman 's practical sagacity, built up a nourishing business, and the 

 grease thus made is still in great demand and high repute for lubri- 

 cating the rolling-mills of ironworks, and for many other kinds of 

 machinery. 



My readers need not be told that there are soapsuds in London as 

 well as in Yorkshire, and they also know that the London soapsuds 

 pass down the drains into the sewers. I may tell them that besides 

 this there are many kinds of acids also passed into London sewers, 

 and that others are generated by the decompositions there abound- 

 ing. These acids do the Frenchman's work upon the London soap- 

 suds, but the separated fat, instead of rising slowly and undisturbed 

 to form a film upon the surface of the water, is rolled and tumbled 

 among its multifarious companion filth, and it sticks to whatever it 

 may find congenial to itself. Hairs, rags, wool, ravellings of cotton, 

 and fibres of all kinds are especially fraternal to such films of fat : they 

 lick it up and stick it about and amid themselves ; and as they and 

 the fat roll and tumble along the sewers together, they become com- 

 pounded and shaped into unsavory balls that are finally deposited on 

 the banks of the Thames, and quietly repose in its hospitable mud. 



But there is no peace even there, and the gentle rest of the fat 

 nodules is of short duration. The mud-larks are down upon them, 

 in spite of all their burrowing ; they are gathered up and melted 

 down. The filthiest of their associated filth is thus removed, and 

 then, and with a very little further preparation, they appear as cakes 

 of dark-colored hard fat, very well suited for lubricating machinery, 

 and indifferently fit for again becoming soap, and once more repeat- 

 ing their former adventures. 



Those gentlemen of the British* press whose brilliant imagination 

 supplies the public with their intersessional harvests of sensational 

 adulteration panics, have obtained a fertile source of paragraphs by 



