PENNY WISDOM. 



[1S52. 



gas works are a sort of niagieal Saving's Bank, in which com- 

 mercial nothings are put iu, and \aluable souiethiBg taken out.* 



Mr. Biokeden has taught us how to make pencils out of dust. 

 Our black k-ad pencils, as is pretty generally known, are made 

 chierty from Bo)Towdale plumbago, brought from a mine in Cum- 

 berland. This mine is becoming exhausted ; and a question has 

 arisen how the supply shall be kept up. Various compounds 

 have been suggested in different quartei-s, but Mr. Brokeden has 

 happily hit upon an expedient which premises wonders. Al- 

 though pieces of plumbago are scarce, plumbago dust is tolerably 

 plentiful, and Mr. Brokeden operates upon this dust. He presses 

 a mass of the powder together, then draws out the air from ben- 

 eath the particles by means of an mr pump, and then presses 

 airaiu with such enormous force as to convert the mass into a solid 

 block, which can be cut into the oblong prisms suitable for pencils. 



If a ton of lead contains three ounces of silver — one ounce in 

 twelve thousand ounces — will it pay to dig out this silver, mech- 

 anically or chemically ? Will it save a penny ? Mr. Pattinson, 

 a manufacturing chemist at Newcastle, says, and shows that it 

 will" although, before his improvements were introduced, the 

 attempt was a losing one, unless the lead contained at least twenty 

 ounces of silver to the ton. Nearly all lead ore contains a trace of 

 silver, which becomes melted and combined in the ingot or pig 

 of lead. Vast are the arrangements which the manufacturers are 

 willino- to make to extricate this morsel of silver from the mass 

 iu which it is buried ; huge furnaces, and melting vessels, and 

 crystallizino- vessels are provided, and elaborate processes are care- 

 fully conducted. The lead, itself, is all the better for losing its 

 silvery companion ; while the silver makes its appearance after- 

 wards in the fonn of dazzhng tea-services, and such hke. 



The mention of Newcastle calls to mind our opening paragraph, 

 relatinri- to a certain table-land of refuse. The history of this 

 useless product carries with it the history of many other remai'k- 

 able pioducts — once useless, but now of great value. Thus it is. 

 Sulphur is thrown into a " burning, fiery furnace ;" it biu-ns away 

 and is converted into a gas called sulphurous acid ; this, being 

 combined with steam and water, becomes liquid sulphuric acid. 

 So far good ; there is no refuse. But let us go on. Common 

 salt, or rather rock salt from Cheshire, is heated with this sul- 

 phuric acid in a fui-nace. A peculiar penetrating gas nses, which 

 is muriatic acid; the soda makers (of whom, more presently,) did 

 not want this troublesome gas, and they, therefore, sent it up 

 aloft throuijh the chimneys. But the gardeners and farmer's all 

 around complained that the muriatic acid vapours poisoned their 

 trees and plants, and then the manufacturei's were driven to con- 

 struct chimneys so lofty as to overtop our loftiest steeples in order 

 to cany away the enemy as far above the region of vegetation as 

 possible. But good luck or g^od sense came to their aid ; tliey 

 devised a mode of combining the gas with water, and thus was 

 produced muriatic acid or spirits of salts ; and then this muriatic 

 acid was made to yield chlorine, and the chlorine was made 

 to form an iiiui-.'diciit in Mcai'liing powder; so that by little 

 and little, the "ihv .Inali'l niuriatic acid gas has become a most 

 respectable and r.'spivtrd iVirud to the manufacturer. Meanwhile 

 the salt and the sulphuric acid are undergoing such changes, by 

 heatings and mixings of different kinds, that they both disappear 

 from the scene ; the useful product left liehind is soda, so valu- 

 able in glass-making, and soap-making, and other processes; the 

 usela«s product is an earthly substance, consisting of calcium and 

 sulphur, which nobody can apply to any profitable purpose, 

 nobody will buy, and nobody even accept as a gift. At a large 

 chemical work near Newcastle, this product has been increasing 

 at such a rajjid rate that it now forms a mass six or eight acres 



• See also an ariicle headed Gas Perfuir.ery, iji volume 3, page SS'l of ihis 

 Miscellany. 



in extent, and thirty or forty feet high : it is a mountain or rather 

 a table-land of difficulties. Here then, we see how chemical 

 manufacturers are saving a penny out of some of their refuse, 

 and looking wistfullj- towards the day when they may [)erchance 

 save a j eniij' out of this monstrous commercial nothing. 



Coal proprietors are, perhaps necessarily, very wasteful people. 

 They accumulate around the mouths of their pits large heaps of 

 small coal, which, formerly, rendered service to no one; and in 

 some parts of the country they burn this coal simply to get rid 

 of it. But, thanks to the Legislaiure, it sonietiines does good by 

 interfering in manufacturing att'aii'S. It ordained that locomotives 

 should not send forth streams of smoke into the air, and we ai'e 

 thus freed from a nuisance which sadly affects our river-steamers 

 and steamer-rivere ; while^ at the same time, coke being used as 

 a non-smokable fuel, and the supply from the gas-woiks being 

 too small, coke-makei-s have looked to the heai)S of small coal at 

 the pit's mouth ; and the result is, that thousands of locomotives 

 are now fed with coke made fi'om the smaU waste coal at the 

 colheiies. The railway companies get their coke cheaper than 

 formerly ; the coal owner makes something out of a (commercial) 

 nothing; and the ground around the coal-pits is becoming freed 

 from an iucumbrauce. And what the coke makere would leave, 

 if they leave anything, the ar-tificial fuel makere will buy ; for in 

 most of the patent fuels now brought under public notice, coal- 

 dust is one of the ingredients. 



How to get a pennyworth of beauty out of old bones and bits 

 of skin, is a problem which the French gelatine-makers have 

 solved very prettily. Does the reader remember some gorgeous 

 sheets of coloured gelatine in the French depai-tment of the 

 Great Exhibition ? We owed them to the slaughter-houses of 

 Paris. Those establishments are so well organized and conducted, 

 that all the refuse is carefully preserved, to be applied to any 

 purposes for which it may be deemed fitting. Very pure gelatine 

 is made from the waste fragments of skin, bone, tendon, ligature, 

 and gelatinous tissue of the animals slaughtered in the Parisian 

 abattoirs ; and thin sheets of this gelatine are made to receive 

 very rich and beautiful coloui-s. As a gelatinous liquid, when 

 melted, it is used in the dressing of woven stuffs, and in the 

 clarification of wine ; and, as a solid, it is cut into threads for the 

 ornamental uses of the confectioner, or made into veiy thin white 

 and transparent sheets of papier f/Iace for copying di'awings, or 

 applied in the making of artificial flowers, or used as a substitute 

 for paper on which gold printing may be executed. In good 

 sooth: when an ox has given us our beef, and our leather, and 

 our tallow, his cai'eer of usefulness is by no means ended; we 

 can get a penny out of him as long as there is a scrap of his 

 substance above ground. 



Dyers and caUco-printers, like mauufocturing chemists, have 

 frequently accumulations of rubbish about their jireraises, which 

 they heartily wish to get rid of at any or no jn'ice ; and at inter- 

 vals, by a new item added to the general stock of available 

 knowledge, one of these accumulations becomes suddenlj' a com- 

 mercial something. The dye material called madder will serve 

 to illustrate this as well as anything else. Madder is the root of 

 a plant which yields much colouring matter bv' steeping in water; 

 and after being so treated, the spent madder is thrown aside as a 

 useless refuse. The refuse is not rich enough for manure ; no 

 river conservatoi's will allow it to be thrown into a running stream ; 

 and the dyer is thus perforce compelled to give it a homestead 

 somewhere or other. But, some clear-headed experimenter has 

 just found out that, actually, one-third of the colouring matter is 

 left imused in the'so-called spent madder; and hehasjshown how 

 to make a pretty penny and an honest pennj- out of it, by the 

 aid of certain hot acids. 



