382 
who are, in most cases, utterly ignorant of even the merest 
rudiments of the style in which they have been erected ? 
Mr. West next read the following paper : — 
ON THE DATA FOR A COMPARISON BETWEEN THE HEAT 
YIELDED BY COKE AND BY COAL BY WILLIAM WEST, 
ESQ., OF LEEDS. 
I know, and I acknowledge all due weight to, the feeling 
which leads practical men to think very lightly of calcula- 
tions which are not put to the proof by experiments, especially 
if they appear in any degree contrary to their own real or 
supposed experience on the great scale. Yet two good pur- 
poses may be answered by such calculations : since our pro- 
cesses and our machinery are all attended and interfered 
with by circumstances diminishing the calculated effects, our 
mechanical powers, by friction or atmospheric resistance, our 
chemical, by the need of time, or an excess of some elements 
for ensuring combination with the saturating quantity, our 
modes of applying heat, to radiation, and escape in various 
other ways — if we can show what the greatest possible 
amount of effect is which can be produced, we may prevent 
fruitless endeavours to exceed that amount. On the other 
hand, if we show that the effects produced fall below what 
calculation shows to be possible, by a quantity much greater 
than the ordinary defects of our proceedings in other cases 
prove to be unavoidable, we may prompt or encourage endea- 
vours to reduce to a moderate standard these defects, and 
may furnish hints to others for new or improved applications 
of Science to the Arts. Such were the reflections which 
occurred to me when the well known opinion that coke equals, 
or very nearly equals, in its power as fuel, the coal from 
