Explanatory Reports on 
[February, 
132 
metallic sulphides, a quantity of sublimed and unburnt sulphur 
is also thrown off, and this, being commercially valuable, has 
also to be colletted and commercially shaped. Hence the prac 
tical problem has demanded considerable expenditure of inge- 
nuity, labour, and capital. I have watched Mr. Hollway’s 
struggles with these difficulties for some time past, with that 
hopeful sympathy which is so justly due to every genuine 
inventor, and therefore have received with much pleasure his 
latest reports of very promising commercial beginnings. These 
reports are accompanied with drawings of smelting-works 
eredted in a country that has lately suffered so largely from the 
destructive combustion of sulphur that there will be poetical 
justice if a new and beneficent combustion of sulphur should 
develop its important mineral resources. The Bakarmtza 
Smelting-works, to which I allude, are at Madianpek, Belgrad, 
Servia. The general plan of the whole of these works need not 
here be reproduced, but the section of the Hollway oxidiser 
(see Figure) recently added to them elucidates at a glance the 
details of the process. f , 
The sulphides to be reduced are spread upon the charging- 
floor on the right, and shovelled in sufficient quantity into the 
funnel-shaped depression of the floor. From this they are 
screwed down by the “ automatic feed ” arrangement, which can 
be obviously made to deliver at varying speeds, as may be 
required, and shuts off the escape of gases like the cup and 
cone of a blast-furnace. They thus trickle down into a sort ot 
hearth or crucible, resembling the Bessemer converter in re^ 
ceiving a blast below the surface of melted metal. (It is lettered 
“ Bessemer” in the figure.) Instead of turning over and dis- 
charging all its contents at the end of the spasm of violent 
combustion, or “ blow,” as in the Bessemer process, the Hollway 
Bessemer is fixed, and its acffion is continuous. The slag (I 
use this word under protest — it should be “ cinder ”) of course 
floats on the top of the metal, and overflows into the settling 
basin, and from thence into the slag waggons, as shown in the 
figure ; and when the metal reaches the mouth of the crucib.e 
that also flows into the basin, from which it is tapped as this 
ba The arrangements of the two blasts— one below for effecting 
the combustion of the sulphur in the midst of the metal, as the 
silicon and carbon are burnt in the Bessemer converter ; and the 
cold blast above for starting the condensation and increasing 
the flue draught— are shown and explain themselves in the 
figure ; also the flue which carries the sulphur vapour into the 
sulphur chambers on the left, where the condensation is com- 
pleted. The partitions, pp , increase the length of the journey 
of the outgoing vapours, and afford additional surface for the 
condensation of the sulphur, which deposits itself on the cham- 
ber walls in the usual crystalline form of crude sulphur. 
