140 TliAXSACTIOXS OF TUB AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



yellow.] The limits of a lecture will not permit me now to explain 

 the advantages of this light. One of these is that, as the light is 

 derived from an incandescent solid body, and not from a mere flame 

 of gns, there is no flickering, but a constant and stead3' light. By 

 this light, too, you see that hues are happily blended better than by 

 candle, oil or gas-light. Fni'ther, it is demonstrable that a six-foot 

 gas-burner sets free as much impurity as eight or nine persons sitting 

 quietly here, "When you remember with what fatal eftects, in the 

 Black Hole in Calcutta, 140 persons were imprisoned in a cube of 

 eighteen feet, with two windows, most of them dying before the next 

 morning, you will see the importance of substituting for a burner 

 setting free as much impurity as eight or nine persons, one which 

 furnishes its own supply of oxygen and greatly diminishes the car- 

 bonic acid. We have here a white and steady light, so brilliant that 

 you need to protect your eyes, and yet filling the room with such an 

 illumination that a gentleman who usually finds his sight too short 

 for reading in the evening, assures me tliat lie finds this to take the 

 place of his failing eyesight. Here we have, from the same amount 

 of gas, sixteen times the supply of light, and instead of robbing the 

 air, it provides its own supply of oxygen. According to the experi- 

 ments made in Paris recently, nnder the order of the Emperor, the 

 saving in expense is thirty or forty per cent. I have not of the other 

 properties of the light, further time to speak than to say that the 

 photographer can employ it instead of the light of the sun. A year 

 ago the City Ilall at Paris was lighted np as you see this [with oxy- 

 gen], and now the Tuileries are lighted in the same manner. For 

 nine years an electric light has been shining from the chalk-cliffs of 

 England, and two electric lights shine from the i)ort of Havre ; why 

 should the grandest city this side of God's globe, be satisfied with an 

 oil light i A French steamer visiting our shores months ago succeeded 

 in finding mechanism with gearing capable of giving 2,500 revolu- 

 tions ; and she came in with the sunlight streaming from her bows, 

 the tax upon her valuable property being one per cent less as a con- 

 serpience. And night after night, from her dock, did she shoot her 

 beams across to the Jersey shore in demonstration of the value of this 

 light. A steamer, amid the movements of the ocean, could produce 

 this splendid light, with a loss of less than two horse power. I was 

 told, by one of the Board, that the galvanic battery was expensive. 

 Only a day or two since it was stated to me tliat a bark came from 

 Malaga freighted with fruit, exj^ecting to arrive here for the holidays. 



