Sept. 2 7 , 1883] 



NATURE 



533 



have come from there, and I can only imagine it must have been 

 an upheaval from somewhere near the spot. I may mention the 

 soundings on the chart show over 2000 fathoms. There was a 

 submarine volcano near the spot in 1789." 



EXPERIMENTS on the liquefaction of oxygen and nitrogen are 

 described by Wroblewski and Olszewski (Compt. Rind. xcvi. 

 1140 and 1225). At - 136° oxygen liquefies under a pressure of 

 22i atmospheres: nitrogen at the same temperature doe Dot 

 liquefy, even under a pressure of 150 atmospheres, but if the 

 pressure is somewhat slowly diminished, care being taken that it 

 doe^ rot become less than 50 atmospheres, the nitrogen becomes 

 li quid. C arbon disulphide solidifies at about — 116°, and alco- 

 hol at -I30°'5. 



From the annual report on the mineral statistics of Victoria, 

 we see that the quantity of gold raised in 1S82 was 864,609 oz. , 

 as against 833,378 oz. in 18S1. The deepest shaft in the 

 colony is the Magdala, at Slawel', 2409 feet deep. 



The additions to the Zoological Society's Gardens during the 

 past week include a White fronted Capuchin (Cebtis albifrons 6 ) 

 from Brazil, presented by Capt. Harrison ; a Puma (Felis con- 

 coIoA from S> uth America, presented by Mr. B. M, Whithard ; 

 a Grey Ichneumon (Herptstes griseus) from India, presented by 

 Mr. Murray Dickinson ; a Ruddy Ichneumon (t/erpes/es smit/ii) 

 from South Africa, presented by Col. J, H. Bowker, F.Z. S. ; a 

 Fallow Deer [Cbrmts Jama 9), European, presented by Sir 

 Henry -Bessemer ; a Persian Gazelle (Gazdla subgutlcrosa S), 

 two Persian Sheep {Otis aries, var. $ $ ) from Persia, pre-ented 

 by lady Bras ey; a Grey Seal (Halichicrus gryplim) from 

 Wales, presented by Mr. J. J. Dodgshon ; two Rufous Tinamous 

 {Rhynchotus rufcscens) from Uruguay, presented by Mr. J. 

 Brown ; a Spanish Terrapin (Clemmys Itprosa), South Euro- 

 pean, pre^en'ed by Mr. Aitchison ; a Yellow-billed Sheathbill 

 (Chionis alia) from Antarctic America, two YarreU's Curassows 

 (Craxcarunculata i 9 ) from South-east Brazil, purchased; a 

 Macaque Monkey {Macacus cynomolgits S ) from India, a Greater 

 Sulphur-crested Cockatoo (Cacatua galeriia) from Australia, two 

 Small Hill Mynahs (Gracula religiosa] from Southern India 

 deposited. 



THE IRON AND STEEL INSTITUTE 



T*HE Iron and Steel Institute has this year resolved to revisit 

 "• the place of its birth — in other words, the young and 

 nourishing town of Middlesl.rough-on-Tees, where the associa- 

 tion was founded some fifteen years ago. The arrangements 

 for its reception and for visits to different works in the neigh- 

 bourhood (though marred in practice by a grievous disaster) 

 left nothing to be desired ; but the papers, though sufficient in 

 number and value for practical metallurgists, offer very little 

 that is of interest to the student of science generally. Hence 

 our notice will be brief. It is somewhat to be regretted (espe- 

 cially seeing that the Eston Works formed the first day's excur- 

 sion) that no paper was devoted to the development of the 

 las-Gilchrist or "basic" process of steel-makin?. This 

 process has been widely and successfully adopted in Germany, 

 but has made little progress as yet in the Cleveland district, 

 for which it may be said to have been specially designed, and 

 where it was first put in practice. On this disappointment, 

 however, it is useless to dwell. Parsing over three adjourned 

 discussions — on tin-plate making, coal-washing machinery, and 

 the manufacture of anthracite pig iron respectively — we come 

 to the new papers prepared for the meeting. There were two 

 dealing with the important manufacture of coke : one by Mr. 

 K. Dixon, on the Simon-Carve's process, and one by Mr. 

 Jameson, on the process which bears his name. We hail these 

 as a further assurance that the barbarous, costly, and offensive 

 beehive oven, which still continues to disgrace our English coking 

 districts, is far on the high road to extinction. In Belgium it has 

 altogether ceased to exist, being superseded by more rational 

 methods ; and the same will soon be the case for the rest of the 



Continent. The two papers before us do not, however, con- 

 tribute very much to our knowledge. Mr. Dixon's deals simply 

 with the cost of erecting ovens on the particular system described, 

 which cost is unfortunately high, and on the yield and quantity of 

 coke produced, which are both satisfactory. Some difficulty is 

 experienced with the bituminous coal of Durham in keeping 

 the valve-boxes and mains free from pitch ; but this, it is hoped, 

 will shortly be overcome. He also describes a method just in- 

 troduced of heating the air required for combustion by the waste 

 gases passing away from the ovens, by which the time needed 

 for coking is expected to bs largely reduced. Mr. Jameson's 

 system, as our readers will remember, consists in burning the 

 coal from the top in a closed oven, and withdraw irg the gases, as 

 they form, from the botto-n, by means of an exhausting appa- 

 ratus. The.-e waste gases are condensed, and give valuable 

 results in ammonia, tar, &c. The amount of this yield has been 

 largely increased, since former papers were read on the subject, 

 by new extracting and condensing appliances, and the percentage 

 of coke made appears also to have improved. One great 

 advantage of the system is that any beehive oven can be adapted to 

 it at a co t of some 10/. or 15/. The oils extracted, the value of 

 which had been questioned, find a ready sale at 2/. to 3/. per 

 tor. 



A paper on raw coal in the blast furnace, prepared by Mr. 

 I. I flhian Bell, F.R.S., was postponed, in consequence of its 

 author's serious illness — an illness from which we are glad to 

 hear that he is recovering. We pass on to a paper by Mr. E. A. 

 Cow per, Past President of the Institute of Mechanical Engi- 

 neers, on the results obtained with the hot-blast stove which 

 bears his name. This, as is well known, is an application to 

 the blast furnace of the fire-brick "regenerator" invented by 

 Sir Win. Siemens for gas furnaces. In the earlier days of the 

 hot-blast process, the lest known means of heating the air wa 

 to pass it through a sort of coil of cast-iron pipes, inclosed with- 

 in a tall furnace. The limit of endurance with such pipes is, 

 however, reached at about 1000° F. ; whereas by employing two 

 inclosed stacl s of fire-bricks, one of which is always being 

 heated from below, while the other is being cooled from above 

 by air passing through it to the furnace, temperatures of 1500 

 are attainable. The advantages of so far increasing the tem- 

 perature were hotly contested, from a theoretical point of view ; 

 but "the proof of the pudding is in the eating," and Mr. 

 Covvper ha, proved beyond doubt that a blast of 1500°, 

 combined with a very large and slowly-working furnace, 

 will realise an economy (in fuel consumed per ton of iron 

 made) which, in these rlays of competition, means just the 

 difference between a fair profit and a heavy loss. The 

 chief element of success in these stoves appears to be the making 

 of the bricks as thin as possible, so that there may be but little 

 depth for the heat to ;oak into or soak out of; and the author 

 describes a form of brick, making what he calls "honeycomb 

 filling," with which there is nowhere a greater thickness than 

 two inches, and this is always heated from both sides. 



Two papers on hydraulic cranes for steel works, by Mr. R. 

 M. Daelen and Mr. T. Wrightson, and another by Mr. J. E. 

 Stead, on a new form of gas sampler, do not require any special 

 comment. Finally we have a paper on blast furnace economy 

 in relation to design, by Mr. R. Howson, which is of a some- 

 what more suggestive character. The almost universal form of 

 the interior of a blast furnace is as follows : — From the throat, 

 where the materials are charged and the gases collected, it 

 widens slowly to a point about two-thirds of the way down, 

 called the boshes. From thence it narrows again, but more 

 y, and ends in a shallow circular pit called the hearth. 

 Mr. Howson asks whether this form has not, from beginning to 

 end, been a " rule-of-thumb business" with English engineers ; 

 and whether the rapid narrowing below the boshes does not in 

 fact favour the lodgment of half-melted cinder, and the conse- 

 quent building up of "scaffolds," which are known to be the 

 most serious of all impediments to the successful working of a 

 blast furnace. It is supposed that the hearth needs "relief 

 from pressure; " but as a matter of fact the difficulty is to get 

 the materials down quickly enough, and the easier their descent 

 is made the better. He proposes a barrel-shaped form, having a 

 regular curve at the boshes, instead of a sharp angle — a form 

 actually adopted by the late Mr. Menelaus at Treforest, and 

 w ith great success as to economy of fuel. With the same ohjr ct 

 he advocates the charging of the coke towards the sides of the 

 furnace, and the stone towards the middle, and the preserving of 

 this distribution throughout, so as to have as much combustible 

 material as possible above and near to the tuyeres. 



