626 
PROGRESS or CHEMISTRY. 
fluence than any of these is at Mork, viz., the popular 
appreciation of its real value gradually raising physical science 
to the prominent place in national education vhich it is 
destined to occupy. If education is intended to prepare 
young people for a life.of usefulness, in 'which their various 
faculties may be employed to the benefit of their fellow-men, 
and consequently to their own, there can be no doubt of the 
value of teaching them to observe, to recollect^ to arrange the 
phenomena of the physical world, and to apply the knowledge 
and skill thus acquired to practical purposes. No phe¬ 
nomena that can be brought within the observation of every¬ 
body by inexpensive experiments are so simple in their 
nature, no reasonings more definite and tangible or more 
easily controlled by special observation than those of che- 
mistr}^ and the science affords, probably, scope for a more 
thorough training of the various faculties of the mind than 
can be supplied to schools by any other means. Among the 
chemical arts much has been doing, but, as usual, in a quiet, 
undemonstrative way. First and foremost among improve¬ 
ments I must mention the introduction into one manufacture 
after another of those admirable furnaces invented by 
Mr. Siemens, and generally known as regenerative furnaces. 
Whether we consider them from the point of view of the 
economy of fuel, or whether as affording the means of 
attaining temperatures beyond the range of other furnaces, 
there can be no doubt of the immense value of this invention. 
Heat is the great source of power in almost all our dealings 
with inorganic matter, and I have not the slightest doubt 
that the power over heat given by these regenerative furnaces 
will revolutionise many a chemical art. The manufacture of 
iron, and its subsequent treatment for the removal of impu¬ 
rities, has been of late years the subject of many experiments. 
Various plans have been proposed for avoiding the injurious 
effects of the mineral impurities of our coal, by using gas for 
the reduction of the iron ores. In this country, however, 
the manufacture of cast iron is carried on in such vast 
quantities that changes in the processes must meet with 
great resistance. The laborious and expensive process of 
puddling hitherto adopted for burning out the carbon from 
cast iron is being gradually superseded by one or other of 
the following—either by treating the molten pigs with 
oxide of iron until the carbon is removed as carbonic oxide, 
or by Bessemer’s process of blowing air through the molten 
cast iron. In either case it is desirable to add some carbon 
to the malleable iron, in order to render it more fusible, and 
for this purpose the best material is the maganiferous car- 
