WILLIAM GOSSAGE 19 



out in 1854, when Gossage had erected a 

 smelting works at Woodend (Widnes), but 

 neither his furnaces nor his towers were 

 ever adopted by copper smelters generally ; 

 sulphurous acid being a more difficult gas to 

 condense than muriatic acid gas; and the 

 vapours often being too dilute to be economi- 

 cally converted into sulphuric acid. Indeed, 

 in later years, Mr. Gossage recognised that 

 the only methods to treat copper ores were 

 to calcine those ores rich in sulphur in kilns 

 or close furnaces, and condense the gases in 

 leaden chambers making sulphuric acid ; and 

 to melt or roast the ores or regulus poor in 

 sulphur in open furnaces, diluting the gases 

 with a large admixture of atmospheric air, and 

 so rendering them, on account of their extreme 

 dilution, comparatively innocuous. His advice 

 was sought during the prolonged litigation, 

 carried on between the late Mr. Tipping, of 

 Bold Hall, and the copper smelters of St. 

 Helens, and these were the conclusions at 

 which in these latest years of his life he had 

 arrived. 



Whilst engaged in his copper smelting 

 operations at Woodend, he saw that a process 

 for expediting the final roasting of "white 

 metal" into "Spongy Regulus," or "Regulus" 



