1878.] 
Economy of Nitrogen. 
147 
gas poured daily into the atmosphere from the combustion 
of coal and other fuel, from the respiration of animals, and 
from the fermentation and putrefaction of organic matter, — 
nor do show how during all these processes carbon, either 
free or existing in some organic combination, is being trans- 
formed into carbonic acid at an astonishing rate. That at 
the same time the carbonic acid of the atmosphere is being 
decomposed by growing vegetation, its oxygen set free, and 
its carbon assimilated, — re-converted into organic com- 
pounds, — is not capable of question. But is fuel being 
generated as rapidly as it is consumed ? Evidently not ; 
otherwise there would have been slight ground indeed for 
the outcry which was so injudiciously raised about the 
prospective exhaustion of our coal-fields. We say “ injudi- 
ciously raised ” because the warnings were at once seized 
hold of by the coal interest, and employed as a weapon for 
striking an almost fatal blow at our manufactures, our com- 
merce, our national wealth, and our domestic comfort. The 
waste of carbon can be checked only by the sacrifice of that 
profligate source of warmth the “ cheerful fire,” — by the 
substitution, wherever possible, of water-power and tidal- 
power, and in brighter climates of direCt solar-power, for 
steam-power obtained by the use of fuel, — and, where no 
such substitution is possible, by penalties upon a consump- 
tion of coal greater per horse-power than what can be 
proved practically necessary. 
Phosphorus is an element which we are wasting in a 
different manner ; not by oxidation, for it is most useful in 
combination with oxygen, but like the metals, by extreme 
comminution and promiscuous distribution. Here the total 
supply existing in Nature is small compared with that of 
carbon. Though phosphorus plays, most fortunately, a 
comparatively insignificant part in our industrial operations, 
yet in the chemistry of life it is second in importance to 
none of the elements. Without phosphorus none, at any 
rate, of the higher organisms, animal or vegetable, can pos- 
sibly exist. All our crops require a due supply of it, and 
being the constituent of plant-food of which most soils are 
soonest exhausted it becomes, upon the principle laid down 
by Liebig, the measure of their fertility. Amongst the 
methods in which this important element is wasted, a pro- 
minent place belongs to the manufacture of lucifer matches. 
Three hundred thousand lbs. of phosphorus are made yearly 
in England and France alone, nearly the whole of which is 
absorbed in the match-manufaCture. More than ten years 
ago Wagner calculated the total annual production for the 
