TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION B. 599 



additions tlie art has received in the Last lialf century, and to offer a few statements 

 to show the magnitude on which operations are conducted. As regards iron, in 

 the last twenty- five years the price of steel has been reduced from 55^. per ton to 51. 

 per ton, but, after giving- the world the inestimable boon of cheap steel by the 

 labours of Bessemer and of Siemens, we were somewhat slow to accept the teaching 

 of experiment as to the best method of treating the new material ; on the other 

 hand, Hadfield has brought manganese steel and aluminium steel within the reach 

 of the manufacturer, and J. Eiley has done much to develop the use of nickel steel. 

 In the case of copper, we have mainly contributed to extraordinary development 

 of wet processes for its extraction from poor sulphides, and have met the great 

 demands for pure metal by the wide adoption of electrolytic processes. 



As regards the precious metals, this country is well to the front, for Great 

 Britain and her colonies produce about 38 per cent, of the gold supply of the world ; 

 and it may be well to add, as an indication of the scale on which operations are 

 conducted", that in London alone one ton of gold and five tons of silver bullion 

 can easily be refined in a day. No pains have been spared in perfecting the method 

 of assay by which the value of gold and silver is ascertained, and during my twenty 

 years' connection with the Royal Mint I have been responsible for the accuracy 

 of the standard fineness of no less than five hundred and fifty-five tons of gold 

 coin, of an aggregate value of seventy millions five hundred thousand pounds 

 sterl'mg. In the case of the platinum industry we owe its extraordinary development 

 to the'skill and enterprise of successive members of the firm of Johnson, Matthey, 

 & Co., who in later years have based their operarions upon the results of the in- 

 vestigations of Devilie and Debrav. Some indication of the value of the material 

 dealt with may be gathered from the statement that two and a half hundredweight 

 of platinum may easily be melted in a single charge, and that the firm, in one 

 operation, extracted a mass of palladium valued at 30,000L from gold-platinum ore 

 actually worth more than a million sterling. 



I wish it were possible to record the services of those who have advanced 

 metallurgy in connection with this Association, but the limitations of_ time render 

 it difficult to do more than refer to some honoured names of past presidents of this 

 Section. Michael Faraday, president of this Section in 1837 and 1846, pi;epared 

 the first specimen of nickel-steel, an alloy which seems to have so promising a 

 future, but we may hardly claim him as a metallurgist ; nor should I be justified m 

 referring, in connection with metallurgical research, to my own master, Graham, 

 president of this Section in 1839, and again in 1844, were it not that his experiments 

 on the occlusion of gases by metals have proved to be of such extraordinary prac- 

 tical importance in connection with the metallurgy of iron. Sir Lyon Playfair 

 presided over this Section in 1855, and again in 1859. His work m connection 

 with Bunsen on the composition of blast-furnace gases was published m the Report 

 of this Association in 1847, and formed the eariiest of a group of researches, 

 amongst which those of Sir Lowthian Bell proved to be of so much importance, ihe 

 latter was President of this Section in 1889. Sir F. Abel, President of this Section 

 in 1877, rendered enduring service to the Government by his elaborate metal- 

 lurgical investigations, in connection with materials used for guns and proiectiles, 

 as well as for defensive purposes. I will conclude this section of the address by 

 a tribute to the memory of Percy. He may be said to have created the English 

 literature of metallurgy, to have enriched it with the records of his own observa- 

 tions, and to have revived the love of our countrymen for metallurgical investiga- 

 tion. His valuable collection of specimens, made while Professor at the Royal 

 School of Mines, is now appropriately lodged at South Kensington, and will 

 form a lasting memorial of his labours as a teacher. He exerted very note- 

 worthy influence in guiding the public to a just appreciation of the labours of 

 scientific men, and he lived to see an entire change in the tone of the public 

 press in this respect. In the year of Percy's presidency over this Section the 

 ' Times ' gave only one-tenth of a column to a summary of the results of the last 

 day but one of the Meeting, although the usual discourse delivered on the previous 

 evening had been devoted to a question of great importance— 'The application 

 of Iron to Railway purposes.' Space was, however, found for the interesting state- 



