316 APPENDIX. [No. XXII. 



its death is taken by a system devised by my brother, Mr. William Smee. 

 This system, which is remarkable for its simplicity and rapidity of 

 execution, has been in use with great success for many years, and those 

 who are partial to the details of scientific book-keeping will discover many 

 devices of interest, but which it is foreign to the purposes of my paper to 

 consider in detail. After the death of the note is registered, it is then 

 deposited in the vaults for reference for ten years, when it is burnt. The 

 object for retaining the notes for so long a period is exclusively for the 

 accommodation of the public ; for although such a course entails a very 

 considerable cost to the Bank, yet the value of the information which is 

 daily being supplied from this cause, shows the importance of it to the 

 monetary community. It is not an easy matter to utterly destroy so large 

 a number of notes as those which are issued by the Bank. Experiments 

 have been tried to reduce them again to pulp, but they have never 

 altogether succeeded, and no plan answers so well as their destruction by 

 fire. A large iron cage is built in the middle of the yard, including a light 

 brick furnace pierced with holes. In this cage the notes are placed and 

 burnt by sackfuls at a time, and nothing is left but a little white ash. 

 Formerly the paper was coloured with smalt, and this was left at the 

 bottom of the furnace as a curious blue mass. The same care which is 

 taken in the manufacture of the paper, and in its transition through its 

 various stages, is maintained to its final destruction, so that from the linen 

 pulp to the cinder, no person can become possessed of a single sheet without 

 committing a felony, immediately liable to detection. As the final result 

 of the changes bank-notes undergo, I am enabled to show you a piece of 

 the blue ash, a portion of the white ash, and a curious mass resembling 

 peat, which arose from the conversion of a number of bank-notes into 

 a peculiar substance from years of exposure to wet and pressure. 



In bringing this paper to a conclusion, I am fully sensible of its defects, 

 and regret that so important a subject should have been treated in a much 

 less efficient manner than the members of the Society have a right to expect. 

 The original intention was simply to have described surface-printing from 

 electrotype for the purposes of the notes and cheques of the Bank of 

 England ; and if a wider scope has been given to these remarks, I trust 

 that they have not been found tedious to the members of the Society, nor 

 have been altogether uninteresting to the mercantile community. If here- 

 after the adoption of this system of Bank of England notes shall have 

 been found to be beneficial to the arts, I shall feel amply rewarded for 

 the anxious thought and labour which I have bestowed upon it a feeling 

 which is equally experienced by Mr. Hensman and Mr. Coe, who have, 

 from the first, made every exertion to bring the system into successful 

 operation. 



