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FOR GENERAL READERS. 



Vol. II. 



DECEMBER 28, iJ 



No. 26. 



PAGE 



Scientific Table Talk 641 



Type-Writer. (Illus.) ... 642 



General Notes 647 



Preparation of Musical Instruments 



{lllus.') ... S49 



Some Recently - Discovered Marine 



Crustacea. (Illus.) ... ... ... 650 



Geological History of Sharks... ... 652 



Solar Eclipse of January 1 653 



Scientific Aims 653 



CONTENTS. 



Insect Artillery 



Flints 



Reviews — 



Transactions of the County of Mid- 

 dlesex Natural History and Science 



Society 



First Yearly Report of the Meteorolo- 

 gical Observations on the SonnbliGk 

 Rationality in the Lower Animals ... 

 The Utility of Bees ... 



PAGE 

 654 

 656 



660 



661 



662 

 663 



Correspondence — 



Colour of the Wings of Catocala 



Sponsa. — The Utility of Bees ... 663 



Answers to Correspondents .-. .. 663 



Selected Books ... ... ... ... 663 



Diary for Next Week ... ... ... 664 



Sales and Exchanges 664 



Notices ... .„ ... ... ... 664 



Meteorological Returns 664 



NOTICE. 



We beg to announce that after this date the publication 

 of Scientific News will be discontinued. A year's ex- 

 perience has shown that, though the number of readers 

 has increased, the rate of increase has not been sufficient 

 to justify the continuance of this journal. An honest 

 endeavour has been made to give in untechnical language 

 particulars of many of the interesting and instructive 

 advances made by scientific workers ; and if we may 

 judge from the many expressions of approval that have 

 reached us, the endeavour itself has been successful. 

 But, unfortunately, there does not yet seem to be a public 

 numerous enough to give adequate support to such a 

 paper as ours; so we have no choice but to thank heartily 

 the contributors, readers, and correspondents who have 

 given us their kindly help, and to bid them a reluctant 

 farewell. 



Subscriptions in hand after this date will be returned. 



SCIENTIFIC TABLE TALK. 



By W. Mattieu Williams, F.R.A.S., F.C.S. 



In Scientific News, November 30th, is a very interesting 

 report of Mr. J. E. Bedford's inaugural address to the 

 Leeds Geological Association on " Natural Gas." In the 

 course of this, Mr. Bedford says, " The remarkable purity 

 of this gas is another important feature in its favour, and 

 for this reason it is especially valuable in puddling 

 furnaces, where the iron is very likely to be deteriorated 

 by sulphur, etc., from inferior fuel." 



Mr. Bedford has abundant text-book authority in 

 support of this usually accepted idea that the fuel used 

 in puddling furnaces may supply sulphur to the iron it 

 is melting, but he is wrong nevertheless. When I went 

 to Sheffield early in 1868, I believed the same, and 

 many other things concerning iron and steel that I had 

 learned from the writings of high authorities on pure 

 science, and from the customary routine of laboratory 

 teaching, which were afterwards refuted by the unso- 

 phisticated teachings of black-faced puddlers and other 

 workers. 



On entering upon my duties as chemist to the Atlas 

 works, where about 5,000 of such men are employed, I 

 found that the coal supplied to the works came from 

 various pits, and was visibly variable in quality, some of 



it being very " brassy " i.e., containing sulphur in the 

 usual form in which it exists in coal, viz., as golden- 

 coloured scales and crystals of iron pyrites. With the 

 customary self-righteousness of the man of science, I 

 looked down with pity upon the ignorance of the people 

 who should use such coal indiscriminately for all the 

 purposes of the works, instead of obtaining analyses of 

 each brand and assigning the sulphurous coal to the 

 work of heating boilers, and using only the purest for the 

 puddling and reheating furnaces. I communicated these 

 ideas — mildly, of course — to Mr. Ellis, the managing part- 

 ner, who at once perpetrated thedaring heresy of affirming 

 his belief that the sulphur of the coal used in puddling 

 furnaces had no effect whatever on the iron ; but he had 

 no objection to my full investigation of the subject. 



I accordingly set to work by first determining the 

 sulphur in each brand of coal supplied to the works, then 

 superintending the puddling of a few charges of given 

 pig first with the purest coals, and second with the most 

 impure. On analysing and mechanically testing the 

 results, I was surprised to find no measurable difference. 

 The sulphurous coal was very variable ; there were 

 veins of pyrites running through certain lumps and none 

 visible in others. I accordingly made a second series of 

 experiments by using as fuel selected lumps of the worst 

 quality. Still no increase of sulphur in the finished iron. 



I then obtained a supply of pyrites in lumps and 

 mixed this with the fuel, first in moderate quantities, 

 then increasing them up to the extravagant amount of 

 561bs. in the fuel of one charge (45 cwt. of pig iron). No 

 mischief was done ; the finished iron was neither better 

 nor worse than average, whether tested by chemical 

 analysis or by the usual mechanical tests. 



The facts being known, the rationale is not difficult to 

 workout. The sulphur comes over with the reverberated 

 flame as sulphurous acid, and this only strikes the cinder, 

 i.e., the fusible silicates, that float on the surface of the 

 melted iron. The conditions are quite different in the 

 blast furnace, where the pyrites come in contact with the 

 iron in the midst of reducing, instead of oxidising, sur- 

 roundings. 



The first evening meeting of the winter session 

 Middlesex Natural History and Science Soc ; 

 opened by an address by the annual Pre= ; 

 Flower, Director of the Natural History " 



