THE QUARTERLY 
JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 
APRIL, 1878. 
I. ECONOMY OF NITROGEN. 
Wtl E have repeatedly heard the observation that che- 
V' ' mists in complaining of “ waste ” are guilty of 
inconsistency. If matter, it was argued, is in- 
destructible, and if no element can be converted — whether 
designedly or accidentally — into another, waste is simply an 
impossibility. Such censures are the natural result of an 
education based rather upon Literature than upon Science, 
and are In themselves of no moment. Still, as in England 
■ — unlike Germany — a man of general “ culture ” is consi- 
dered entitled to lay down the law upon any subject what- 
soever, and is often listened to with more attention than the 
specialist or the man of original research, it may be useful 
to point out the fallacy involved. 
Waste, from a chemico-technical point of view, depends 
not on the fancied destruction of some element, nor on its 
transmutation into some other simple body, but on useful 
matter being thrown into a state where it is no longer im- 
mediately available for our purposes. It is thus, so to 
speak, locked up ; withdrawn, for a longer or shorter time, 
from circulation, just like specie buried by a miser of the 
old school. Such transmutations may take place in various 
manners. A useful substance, whether simple or compound, 
may be brought into the state of a highly dilute solution, 
or may be mixed with solid matter in so minute a proportion 
as to be practically irrecoverable. Nature presents us with 
many instances of bodies, valuable, indeed, in themselves, 
but rendered useless by admixture with a vast excess of 
alien substances. We need only mention, as cases in point, 
the silver and iodine, whose presence has been demonstrated 
VOL. viii. (n.s.) l 
