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ON FUEL ITS NATURE, VALUE, AND APPLICATION. BY W. 
L. SIMPSON, ESQ., C.E., THURNSCOE HALL, DONCASTER. 
Although England has derived great part of her national 
glory from the fact of her being situated near the centre of 
the earth’s civilization, and from her insular position afford- 
ing capabilities for commerce which the extreme richness 
of her soil enables her to originate and support, yet there 
is one condition of her political power, the absence of 
which has caused nations, otherwise similarly endowed, 
to fall far short of our own both in agricultural and manu- 
facturing development. 
This condition it is my object in this paper to bring in 
detail more prominently before you. I allude to the exist- 
ence of large, almost illimitable, resources of fuel. Whether 
the processes of manufacture, the operations of agriculture, 
or the facilities for speedy transit of manufactured products 
from different parts of our own, or the most distant of 
foreign countries, are conceived to be the chief agents in 
the advancement of our national prosperity, in all and each 
we cannot but recognise the absolute necessity, everywhere 
so strikingly manifest, of an abundant and economical pro- 
duction of artificial heat. In nature, heat appears as an 
universally distributed vivifying and fructifying principle; 
and in art the elimination of force is almost equally de- 
pendent on its presence. 
The following remarks will, however, illustrate more 
clearly the different applications of which it is capable. 
I propose first to consider the nature of the different fuels 
in common use ; and, secondly, to ascertain the relative 
economic value of each, concluding with deducing from 
such values a few practical suggestions on improvements 
of which our present system is capable. 
First, then, let us examine the nature of Wood as a fuel. 
VOL. III. M 
