s to get
a good wind furnace into condition to put the crucible in. My time in
those days was not worth much; but if I valued it at 2s. 6d. per week, it
would even then have been cheaper to use gas to do the same thing,
irrespective of the cost of coke.

The age of gaseous fuel is commencing; and I feel daily, from the
correspondence I receive, that there is a growing impression that gas is
going to perform miracles. We do not need to go mad about it; and my own
precept and practice is to employ gas only where its use shows a profit,
either in time or money. Many of those present know that I am as ready to
totally condemn gaseous fuel where it does not pay as to advise its use
where some advantage is to be gained. You will understand that my remarks
apply to coal gas only. As to producer or furnace gases, I know
practically nothing, except that sometimes it pays better to burn your
candle as a candle than make it into gas, and burn it as a gas afterward.
The use of producer gas no doubt pays on a large scale; and things on a
large scale, so far as gas is concerned, are not matters with which I have
time to concern myself. The commercial use of coal gas has yet to be
developed. It is in its infancy; and there are very few, if any, who have
any conception of its endless uses, both for domestic and manufacturing
purposes. The more general the information which can be given about its
uses, the sooner it will find its own level, and the sooner the gas
companies will appreciate the fact that their best customers are to be
found among those who can use coal gas as a fuel for special work in
manufacturing industries because it is profitable to use, and saves
expensive labor. My own experiments with alloys of the rarer metals, which
have not been concluded without profit to myself, would certainly never
have been undertaken except with the use of gas furnaces, which were both
practically unlimited in power and admitted of the most absolute precision
in use; and I may safely say, without violating any confidence, that many
of the precious stories and so-called "natural" products make their
appearance in the world first in a crucible in a gas furnace.

At the conclusion of my lecture before the Institute at Leeds, on
"Combustion and the Utilization of Waste Heat," Mr. Kitson, the Chairman,
remarked that if he were a dreamer of dreams, he might look forward to the
time when he would be growing cucumbers with the waste heat of his i