63 



strictest fire conservancy being maintained at a con- 

 siderable annual expense. 



33. With what advantage waste materials, by the aid 

 waste products of Chemistry and manufacturing ingenuity, 

 the chemist. , have been converted into great sources of 

 wealth in England, will be gathered from the following 

 quotation from a Lecture by Dr. Lyon Play fair,* 

 and will have the effect, I hope, of teaching us 

 for the future to endeavour to turn to account the 

 many products we have up to the present regard- 

 ed as rubbish. " Chemistry, like a prudent house- 

 wife," Dr. Playfair writes, " economises every scrap, 

 The clippings of the travelling tinker are mixed with 

 the parings of horses' hoofs from the smithy, the 

 cast-off woollen garments of the poorest inhabitants 

 of the sister isle, and soon afterwards, in the form of 

 dyes of brightest blue, grace the dress of courtly 

 dames. The main ingredient of the ink with which 

 I now write was once part of the broken hoop of an 

 old beer-barrel. The bones of dead animals yield the 

 chief constituent of lucifer matches. The dregs of 

 port wine, carefully rejected by the port wine drinker, 

 in decanting his favourite beverage, are taken by him 

 in the morning as seidlitz powders. The offal of the 

 streets, and the washing of coal-gas, re-appear, care- 

 fully preserved in the lady's smelling-bottle, or are 

 used by her to flavour blanc-manges for her friends. 

 This economy of art is only in imitation of what we 

 observe in the chemistry of nature. Animals live and 

 die ; their dead bodies passing into putridity, escape 



* "Chambers' Journal," Saturday, June 13th, 1874, No. 540. 



