380 SCIENCE IN SHORT CHAPTERS. 



whitewashed shaft with no smoke issuing from its mouth, 

 he expressed his disappointment at finding that the engine 

 was not at work. To all who have been accustomed 

 to the "Black Country," where coal is so shamefully 

 wasted because it is cheap, the tall clean whitewashed 

 shafts of Cornwall, all so smokeless, present quite an as- 

 tonishing appearance. 



This is not a result of " smoke-consuming" apparatus, 

 but mainly of careful firing. It was in the first place pro- 

 moted by the high price of coal due to the cost of carriage 

 before the Cornish railways were constructed, and it brought 

 about a curious result. Horse-power for horse-power the 

 cost of fuel for working Cornish pumping engines has been 

 brought below that of pumping engines in the places where 

 the price of coal per ton was less than one-half. Another 

 coal famine that should raise the price of coal in London 

 to 60s. per ton, and keep it there for two or three years, 

 would effect more smoke abatement than we can hope to 

 result from the present and many future South Kensing- 

 ton efforts. I need scarcely dwell upon the necessity for 

 a due supply of air. T^his is well understood by everybody. 

 An over supply of air does mischief, by carrying away 

 wastefully a proportionate quantity of heat. The waste 

 due to this is sometimes very serious. 



After reviewing all that has been done, the conclusion 

 that London cannot become a clean, smokeless, and beauti- 

 ful city, so long as we are dependent upon open fire-grates 

 of anything like ordinary construction, and fed with bitu- 

 minous 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 Eng- 

 lishmen 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. Instead 

 of receiving our coal in its crude state he proposes that wo 

 should have its smoke-producing constituents removed be- 

 fore 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 rich- 



