Chapter IX: Part 9

The Royal Commissioners estimate that the North-American coal-fields contain an untouched coal area equal to seventy times the whole of ours. Further investigation is likely to increase rather than diminish this estimate. An important portion of this vast source of supply is well situated for shipment, and may be easily worked at little cost. Hitherto, the American coal-fields have been greatly neglected, partly on account of the temptations to agricultural occupation which are afforded by the vast area of the American continent, and partly by the barbarous barriers of American politics. Large amounts of capital which, under the social operation of the laws of natural selection, would have been devoted to the unfolding of the vast mineral resources of the United States, are still wastefully invested in the maintenance of protectively nursed and sickly imitation of English manufactures. When the political civilization of the United States become sufficiently advanced to establish a national free-trade policy, this perverted capital will flow into its natural channels, and the citizens of the States will be supplied with the more highly elaborated industrial products at a cheaper rate than at present, by obtaining them in exchange for their superabundant raw material from those European countries where population is overflowing the raw material supplies.

When this time arrives, and it may come with the characteristic suddenness of American changes, the question of American _versus_ English coal in the English markets will reduce itself to one of horizontal _versus_ vertical difficulties. If at some future period the average depth of the Newcastle coal-pits becomes 3000 feet greater than those of the pits near the coast of the Atlantic or American lakes, and if the horizontal difficulties of 3000 miles of distance are less than the vertical difficulties of 3000 feet of depth, then coals will be carried from America to Newcastle. They will reach London and the towns on the South Coast before this, that is, when the vertical difficulties at Newcastle plus those of horizontal traction from Newcastle to the south, exceed those of eastward traction across the Atlantic.

As the cost of carriage increases in a far smaller ratio than the open ocean distance, there is good reason for concluding that the day when London houses will be warmed by American coal is not very far distant. We, in England, who have outgrown the pernicious folly of “protecting native industry” will heartily welcome so desirable a consummation. It will render unnecessary any further inquiry into the existence of London “coal rings” or combinations for restricted output among colliers or their employers. If any morbid impediments to the free action of the coal trade do exist, the stimulating and purgative influence of foreign competition will rapidly restore the trade to a healthy condition.

The effect of such introduction of American coal will not be to perpetually lock up our deep coal nor even to stop our gradual progress towards it. We shall merely proceed downwards at a much slower rate, for in America, as with ourselves, the easily accessible coal will be first worked, and as that becomes exhausted, the deeper, more remote, thinner, and inferior will only remain to be worked at continually increasing cost. When both our own and foreign coal cost more than peat, or wood, or other fuel, then and therefore will coal become quite inaccessible to us, and this will probably be the case long before we are stopped by the physical obstacles of depth, density, or high temperature.

As this rise of value must of necessity be gradual, and as the superseding of British by foreign coal, as well as the final disuse of coal, will gradually converge from the circumference towards the centres of supply, from places distant from coal-pits to those close around them, we shall have ample warning and opportunity for preparing for the social changes that the loss of the raw material will enforce.

The above-quoted writer, in the “Edinburgh Review,” expresses in strong and unqualified terms an idea that is very prevalent in England and abroad: he says that, “The course of manufacturing supremacy of wealth and of power is directed by coal. That wonderful mineral, of the possession of which Englishmen have thought so little but wasted so much, is the modern realization of the philosopher’s stone. This chemical result of primeval vegetation has been the means by its abundance of raising this country to an unprecedented height of prosperity, and its deficiency might have the effect of lowering it to slow decline.”

*** “It raises up one people and casts down another; it makes railways on land and paths on the sea. It founds cities, it rules nations, it changes the course of empires.”

The fallacy of these customary attributions of social potency to mere mineral matter is amply shown by facts that are previously stated by the reviewer himself. He tells us that “the coal-fields of China extend over an area of 400,000 square miles; and a good geologist, Baron Von Richthofen, has reported that he himself has found a coal-field in the province of Hunau covering an area of 21,700 square miles, which is nearly double our British coal area of 12,000 square miles. In the province of Shansi, the Baron discovered nearly 30,000 square miles of coal with unrivaled facilities for mining. But all these vast coal-fields, capable of supplying the whole world for some thousands of years to come, are lying unworked.”

If “the course of manufacturing supremacy of wealth and of power” were directed by coal, then China, which possesses 33·3 times more of this directive force than Great Britain, and had so early a start in life, should be the supreme summit of the industrial world. If this solid hydrocarbon “raises up one people and casts down another,” the Chinaman should, be raised thirty-three times and three tenths higher than the Englishman; if it “makes railways on land and paths on the sea,” the Chinese railways should be 33·3 times longer than ours, and the tonnage of their mercantile marine 33·3 times greater.

Every addition to our knowledge of the mineral resources of other parts of the world carries us nearer and nearer to the conclusion that the old idea of the superlative abundance of the natural mineral resources of England is a delusion. We are gradually discovering that, with the one exception of tin-stone, we have but little if any more than an average supply of useful ores and mineral fuel. It is a curious fact, and one upon which we may profitably ponder, that the poorest and the worst iron ores that have ever been commercially reduced, are those of South Staffordshire and the Cleveland district, and these are the two greatest iron-making centres of the world. There are no ores of copper, zinc, tin, nickel, or silver in the neighborhood of Birmingham, nor any golden sands upon the banks of the Rea, yet this town is the hardware metropolis of the world, the fatherland of gilding and plating, and is rapidly becoming supreme in the highest art of gold and silver work.

These, and a multitude of other analogous facts, abundantly refute the idea that the native minerals, the natural fertility, the navigable rivers, or the convenient seaports, determine the industrial and commercial supremacy of nations. The moral forces exerted by the individual human molecules are the true components which determine the resulting force and direction of national progress. It is the industry and skill of our workmen, the self-denial, the enterprise, and organizing ability of our capitalists, that has brought our coal so precociously to the surface and redirected for human advantage the buried energies of ancient sunbeams, while the fossil fuel of other lands has remained inert.

The foreigner who would see a sample of the source of British prosperity must not seek for it in a geological museum or among our subterranean rocks; let him rather stand on the Surrey side of London Bridge from 8 to 10 A.M. and contemplate the march of one of the battalions of our metropolitan industrial army, as it pours forth in an unceasing stream from the railway stations towards the City. An analysis of the moral forces which produce the earnest faces and rapid steps of these rank and file and officers of commerce will reveal the true elements of British greatness, rather than any laboratory dissection of our coal or ironstone.

Fuel and steam-power have been urgently required by all mankind. Englishmen supplied these wants. Their urgency was primary and they were first supplied, even though the bowels of the earth had to be penetrated in order to obtain them. In the present exceptional and precocious degree of exhaustion of our coal treasures, we have the _effect_ not the _cause_ of British industrial success.

If in a ruder age our greater industrial energy enabled us to take the lead in supplying the ruder demands of our fellow-creatures, why should not a higher culture of those same abundant energies qualify us to maintain our position and enable us to minister to the more refined and elaborate wants of a higher civilization? There are other necessary occupations quite as desirable as coal-digging, furnace-feeding, and cotton-spinning.

The approaching exhaustion of our coal supplies should therefore serve us as a warning for preparation. Britain will be forced to retire from the coal trade, and should accordingly prepare her sons for higher branches of business,—for those in which scientific knowledge and artistic training will replace mere muscular strength and mechanical skill. We have attained our present material prosperity mainly by our excellence in the use of steam-power; let us now struggle for supremacy in the practical application of brain-power.

We have time and opportunity for this. The exhaustion of our coal supplies will go on at a continually retarding pace—we shall always be approaching the end, but shall never absolutely reach it, as every step of approximation will diminish the rate of approach; like the everlasting process of reaching a given point by continually halving our distance from it.

First of all we shall cease to export coal; then we shall throw up the most voracious of our coal-consuming industries, such as the reduction of iron-ore in the blast-furnace; then copper-smelting and the manufacture of malleable iron and steel from the pig, and so on progressively. If we keep in view the natural course and order of such progress, and intelligently prepare for it, the loss of our coal need not in the smallest degree retard the progress of our national prosperity.

If, however, we act upon the belief that the advancement of a nation depends upon the mere accident of physical advantages, if we fold our arms and wait for Providence to supply us with a physical substitute for coal, we shall become Chinamen, minus the unworked coal of China.

If our educational efforts are conducted after the Chinese model; if we stultify the vigor and freshness of young brains by the weary, dull, and useless cramming of words and phrases; if we poison and pervert the growing intellect of British youth by feeding it upon the decayed carcases of dead languages, and on effete and musty literature, our progress will be proportionately Chinaward; but if we shake off that monkish inheritance which leads so many of us blindly to believe that the business of education is to produce scholars rather than men, and direct our educational efforts towards the requirements of the future rather than by the traditions of the past, we need have no fear that Great Britain will decline with the exhaustion of her coal-fields.

The teaching and training in schools and colleges must be directly and designedly preparatory to those of the workshop, the warehouse, and the office; for if our progress is to be worthy of our beginning, the moral and intellectual dignity of industry must be formally acknowledged and systematically sustained and advanced. Hitherto, we have been the first and the foremost in utilizing the fossil forces which the miner has unearthed; hereafter we must in like manner avail ourselves of the living forces the philosopher has revealed. Science must become as familiar among all classes of Englishmen as their household fuel. The youth of England must be trained to observe, generalize, and _investigate_ the phenomena and forces of the world outside themselves; and also those moral forces within themselves, upon the right or wrong government of which the success or failure, the happiness or misery of their lives will depend.

With such teaching and training the future generations of England will make the best and most economical use of their coal while it lasts, and will still advance in material and moral prosperity in spite of its progressive exhaustion.

“THE ENGLISHMAN’S FIRESIDE.”

During the investment of Paris, the _Comptes Rendus_ of the Acadamy of Sciences were mainly filled with papers on the construction and guidance of balloons; with the results of ingenious researches on methods of making milk and butter without the aid of cows; on the extraction of nutritious food from old boots, saddles, and other organic refuse; and other devices for rendering the general famine more endurable. In like manner, our present coal famine is directing an important amount of scientific, as well as commercial, attention to the subject of economizing coal and finding substitutes for it.

A few thoughtful men have shocked their fellow-sufferers very outrageously by wishing that coal may reach 3_l._ per ton, and remain at that price for a year or two. I confess that, in spite of my own empty coal-cellar and small income, I am one of those hard-hearted cool calculators, being confident that, even from the narrow point of view of my own outlay in fuel, the additional amount I should thus pay in the meantime would be a good investment, affording by an ample return in the saving due to consequent future cheapness.

Regarded from a national point of view, I am convinced that 3_l._ a ton in London, and corresponding prices in other districts, if thus maintained, would be an immense national blessing. I say this, being convinced that nothing short of pecuniary pains and penalties of ruinous severity will stir the blind prejudices of Englishmen, and force them to desist from their present stupid and sinful waste of the greatest mineral treasure of the island.

One of the grossest of our national manifestations of Conservative stupidity is our senseless idolatrous worship of that domestic fetish, “the Englishman’s fireside.” We sacrifice health, we sacrifice comfort, we begrime our towns and all they contain with sooty foulness, we expend an amount far exceeding the interest of the national debt, and discount our future prospects of national prosperity, in order that we may do what? Enjoy the favorite recreation of idiots. It is a well-known physiological fact that an absolute idiot, with a cranium measuring sixteen inches in circumference, will sit and stare at a blazing fire for hours and hours continuously, all the day long, except when feeding, and that this propensity varies with the degree of mental vacuity.

Few sights are more melancholy than the contemplation of a party of English fire-worshipers seated in a semicircle round the family fetish on a keen frosty day. They huddle together, roast their knees, and grill their faces, in order to escape the chilling blast that is brought in from all the chinks of leaky doors and windows by the very agent they employ, at so much cost, for the purpose of keeping the cold away. The bigger the fire the greater the draught, the hotter their faces the colder their backs, the greater the consumption of coal the more abundant the crop of chilblains, rheumatism, catarrh, and other well-deserved miseries.

The most ridiculous element of such an exhibition is the complacent self-delusion of the victims. They believe that their idol bestows upon them an amount of comfort unknown to other people, that it affords the most perfect and salubrious ventilation, and, above all, that it is a “cheerful” institution. The “cheerfulness” is, perhaps, the broadest part of the whole caricature, especially when we consider that, according to this theory of the cheerfulness of fire-gazing, the 16-inch idiot must be the most cheerful of all human beings.

The notion that our common fireplaces and chimneys afford an efficient means of ventilation, is almost too absurd for serious discussion. Everybody who has thought at all on the subject is aware that in cold weather the exhalations of the skin and lungs, the products of gas-burning, etc., are so much heated when given off that they rise to the upper part of the room (especially if any cold outer air is admitted), and should be removed from there before they cool again and descend. Now, our fireplace openings are just where they ought _not_ to be for ventilation; they are at the lower part of the room, and thus their action consists in creating a current of cold air or “draught” from doors and windows, which cold current at once descends, and then runs along the floor, chilling our toes and provoking chilblains.

This cold fresh air having done its worst in the way of making us uncomfortable, passes directly up the chimney without doing us any service for purposes of respiration. Our mouths are usually above the level of the chimney opening, and thus we only breathe the vitiated atmosphere which it fails to remove.

Not only does the fire-opening fail to purify the air we breathe, it actually prevents the leakage of the lower part of the windows and doors from assisting in the removal of the upper stratum of vitiated air, for the strong up-draught of the chimney causes these openings to be fully occupied by an inflowing current of cold air, which at once descends, and then proceeds, as before stated, to the chimney. If the leakage is insufficient to supply the necessary amount of chilblain-making and bronchitis-producing draught, it has to enter by way of the chimney-pot in the form of occasional spasms of down-draught, accompanied by gusts of choking and blackening smoke. It is a fact not generally known, that smoky chimneys are especial English institutions, one of the peculiar manifestations of our very superior domestic comfortableness.

It is true that, in some of our rooms, an Arnott’s ventilator opens into the upper part of the chimney, but this was intended by Dr. Arnott as an adjunct to his modification of the German stove, and such ventilator can only act efficiently where a stove is used. The pressure required to fairly open it can only be regularly obtained when the chimney is closed below, or its lower opening is limited to that of a stovepipe.

The mention of a German stove has upon an English fire-worshiper a similar effect to the sight of water upon a mad dog. Again and again, when I have spoken of the necessity of reforming our fireplaces, the first reply elicited has been, “What, would you have us use German stoves?” In every case where I have inquired of the exclaimer, “What sort of a thing is a German stove?” the answer has proved that the exclamation was but a manifestation of blind prejudice based upon total ignorance. These people who are so much shocked at the notion of introducing “German stoves” have no idea of the construction of the stoves which deservedly bear this title. Their notion of a German stove is one of those wretched iron boxes of purely English invention known to ironmongers as “shop stoves.” These things get red hot, their red-hot surface frizzles the dust particles that float in the atmosphere and perfume the apartment accordingly. This, however disagreeable, is not very mischievous, perhaps the reverse, as many of these dust particles, which are revealed by a sunbeam, are composed of organic matter which, as Dr. Tyndall argues, may be carriers of infection. If we must inhale such things, it is better that we should breathe them cooked than take them raw.

The true cause of the headaches and other mischief which such stoves unquestionably induce is very little understood in this country. It has been falsely attributed to over-drying of the atmosphere, and accordingly evaporating pans and other contrivances have been attached to such stoves, but with little or no advantage. Other explanations are given, but the true one is that iron _when red hot is permeable by carbonic oxide_. This was proved by the researches of Professor Graham, who showed that this gas not only _can_ pass through red-hot iron with singular facility, but actually _does_ so whenever there is atmospheric air on one side and carbonic oxide on the other.

For the benefit of my non-chemical readers, I may explain that when any of our ordinary fuel is burned, there are two products of carbon combustion, one the result of complete combustion, the other of semi-combustion—carbonic acid and carbonic oxide—the former, though suffocating when breathed alone or in large proportion, is not otherwise poisonous, and has no disagreeable odor; it is in fact rather agreeable in small quantities, being the material of champagne bubbles and of those of other effervescing drinks. Carbonic oxide, the product of semi-combustion, is quite different. Breathed only in small quantities, it acts as a direct poison, producing peculiarly oppressive headaches. Besides this, it has a disagreeable odor. It thus resembles many other products of imperfect combustion, such as those which are familiar to everybody who has ever blown out a tallow candle, and left the red wick to its own devices.

On this account alone any kind of iron stove capable of becoming red-hot should be utterly condemned. If Englishmen did their traveling in North Europe in the winter, their self-conceit respecting the comfort of English houses would be cruelly lacerated, and none such would perpetrate the absurdity of applying the name of “German stove” to the iron fire-pots that are sold as stoves by English ironmongers.

As the Germans use so great a variety of stoves, it is scarcely correct to apply the title of German to any kind of stove, unless we limit ourselves to North Germany. There, and in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Russia, the construction of stoves becomes a specialty. The Russian stove is perhaps the most instructive to us, as it affords the greatest contrast to our barbarous device of a hole in the wall into which fuel is shoveled, and allowed to expend nine-tenths of its energies in heating the clouds, while only the residual ten per cent does anything towards warming the room. With the thermometer outside below zero, a house in Moscow or St. Petersburg is kept incomparably more warm and comfortable, and is _better_ ventilated (though, perhaps, not so _much_ ventilated) than a corresponding class of house in England, where the outside temperature is 20 or 30 degrees higher, and this with a consumption of about one-fourth of the fuel which is required for the production of British bronchitis.

This is done by, first of all, sacrificing the idiotic recreation of fire-gazing, then by admitting no air into the chimney but that which is used for the combustion of the fuel; thirdly, by sending as little as possible of the heat up the chimney; fourthly, by storing the heat obtained from the fuel in a suitable reservoir, and then allowing it gradually and steadily to radiate into the apartment from a large but not overheated surface.

The Russian stove by which these conditions are fulfilled is usually an ornamental, often a highly artistic, handsome article of furniture, made of fire-resisting porcelain, glazed and otherwise decorated outside. Internally it is divided by thick fire-clay walls into several upright chambers or flues, usually six. Some dry firewood is lighted in a suitable fireplace, and is supplied with only sufficient air to effect combustion, all of which enters below and passes fairly through the fuel. The products of combustion being thus undiluted with unnecessary cold air, are very highly heated, and in this state pass up compartment or flue No. 1; they are then deflected, and pass down No. 2; then up No. 3, then down No. 4, then up No. 5, then down No. 6. At the end of this long journey they have given up most of their heat to the 24 heat-absorbing surfaces of the fire-clay walls of the six flues.

When the interior of the stove is thus sufficiently heated, the fire-door and the communication with the chimney are closed, and the fire is at once extinguished, having now done its day’s work; the interior of the stove has bottled up its calorific force, and holds it ready for emission into the apartment. This is effected by the natural properties of the walls of the earthenware reservoir. They are bad conductors and good radiators. The heat slowly passes through to the outside of the stove, is radiated into the apartment from a large and moderately-heated surface, which affords a genial and well-diffused temperature throughout.

There is no scorching in one little red-hot hole, or corner, or box, and freezing in the other parts of the room. There are no draughts, as the chimney is quite closed as soon as the heat reservoir is supplied. If one of these heat reservoirs is placed in the hall, where it may form a noble ornament and can easily communicate with an underground flue, it warms every part of the house, and enables the Russian to enjoy a luxurious temperate climate indoors in spite of arctic winter outside.

In a house thus warmed and free from draughts or blasts of cold air, ventilation becomes the simplest of problems. Nothing more is required than to provide an inlet and outlet in suitable places, and of suitable dimensions, when the difference between the specific gravity of the cold air without and warm air within does all the rest. Nothing is easier to arrange than to cause all the entering air to be warmed on its way by the hall stove, and to regulate the supply which each apartment shall receive from this general or main stream by adjusting its own upper outlet. In our English houses, with open chimneys, all such systematic, scientific ventilation is impossible, on account of the dominating, interfering, useless, and comfort-destroying currents produced by these wasteful air-shafts.

I should add that the Russian porcelain reservoirs may be constructed for a heat supply of a few hours or for a whole day, and I need say nothing further in refutation of the common British prejudice which confounds so admirable and truly scientific a contrivance with the iron fire-pot above referred to.

There is another kind of stove, which, for the sake of distinction, I may call Scandinavian, as it is commonly used in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, besides some parts of North Germany. This is a tall, hollow iron pillar, of rectangular section, varying from three to six feet in width, and rising half-way to the ceiling of the room, and sometimes higher. A fire is lighted at the lower part, and the products of combustion, in their way upwards, meet with horizontal iron plates, which deflect them first to the right, then to the left, and thus compel them to make a long serpentine journey before they reach the chimney. By this means they give off their heat to the large surface of iron plate, and enter the chimney at a comparatively low temperature. The heat is radiated into the apartment from the large metal surface, no part of which approaches a red-heat. A further economy is commonly effected by placing this iron pillar in the wall separating two rooms, so that one of its faces is in each room. Thus two rooms are heated by one fire. One of these may be the kitchen, and the same fire that prepares the food may be used to warm the dining-room. The fire-worshiper is of course deprived of his “cheerful” occupation of staring at the coals, and he also loses his playthings, as neither poker, tongs, nor coal-scuttle are included in the furniture of an apartment thus heated. People differently constituted consider that an escape from the dust, dirt, and clatter of these is a decided advantage.

Of course these stoves of our northern neighbors are costly—may be very costly when highly ornamental. The stove of a Norwegian “bonder,” or peasant proprietor, costs nearly half as much as the two-roomed wooden house in which it is erected, but the saving it effects renders it a good investment. It would cost 100_l._ or 200_l._ to fit up an English mansion with suitable porcelain stoves of the Russian pattern, but a saving of 20_l._ a year in fuel would yield a good return as regards mere cost, while the gain in comfort and healthfulness would be so great that, once enjoyed and understood, such outlay would be willingly made by all who could afford it, even if no money saving were effected.

Only last week I was discussing this question in a railway carriage, where one of my fellow-passengers was an intelligent Holsteiner. He confirmed the heresy by which I had shocked the others, in exulting in the high price of coal, and wishing it to continue. He told us that when wood was abundant in his country, fuel was used as barbarously, as wastefully, and as inefficiently as it now is here, but that the deforesting of the land, and the great cost of fuel, forced upon them a radical reform, the result of which is that they now have their houses better warmed, and at a less cost than when fuel was obtainable at one fourth of its present cost.

Such will be the case with us also if we can but maintain the present coal famine during one or two more winters, especially if we should have the further advantage of some very severe weather in the meantime. Hence the cruel wishes above expressed. The coal famine would scarcely be necessary if we had Russian winters, for in such case our houses, instead of being as they are, merely the most uncomfortable in North Europe, would be quite uninhabitable. With our mild winters we require the utmost severity of fuel prices to civilize our warming and ventilating devices.

“BAILY’S BEADS.”

TO THE EDITOR OF THE _Times_.

SIR,—The curious breaking up of the thin annular rim of the sun which is uncovered just before and just after totality, or which surrounds the moon during an annular eclipse, has been but occasionally observed, and some scepticism as to the accuracy of Baily’s observations has lately arisen. Having attempted an explanation of the “beads,” I have looked with much interest for the reports of the eclipse of 1870, for, if I am right, they ought to have been well seen on this occasion. This has been the case. We are informed that both Lord Lindsay and the Rev. S. J. Perry have observed them, and that Lord Lindsay has set aside all doubts respecting their reality by securing a photographic record of their appearance.

My explanation is that they are simply sun-spots seen in profile—spots just caught in the fact of turning the sun’s edge. All observers are now agreed as to the soundness of Galileo’s original description of the spots—that they are huge cavities, great rifts of the luminous surface of the sun, many thousands of miles in diameter, and probably some thousand miles deep. Let us suppose the case of a spot—say, 2,000 miles deep and 10,000 miles across (Sir W. Herschel has measured spots of 50,000 miles diameter). When such a spot in the course of the sun’s rotation reaches that part which forms the visible edge of the sun, it must, if rendered visible, be seen as a notch; but what will be the depth of such a notch? Only about 1-430th of the sun’s diameter. But the apparent depth would be much less as the edge or rim of the spot next to the observer would cut off more or less of its actually visible depth, this amount depending upon the lateral or east and west diameter of the spot and its position at the time of observation.

Thus, the visible depth of such a notch would rarely exceed one thousandth of the sun’s apparent diameter, or might be much less. The sun being globular, the edge which is visible to us is but our horizon of his fiery ocean, which we see athwart the intervening surface as it gradually bends away from our view. So small an indent upon this edge would, under ordinary circumstances of observation, be rendered quite invisible by the irradiation of the vast globular surface of the glaring photosphere, upon which it would visually encroach.

If, however, this body of glare could be screened off, and only a line of the sun’s edge, less than one thousandth of his diameter, remain visible, the notch would appear as a distinct break in this curved line of light. If a group of spots, or a great irregular spot with several umbræ, were at such a time situated upon the sun’s edge, the appearance of a series of such notches or breaks leaving intermediate detachments of the visible ring of the photosphere would be the necessary result, and thus would be presented exactly the appearance described as “Baily’s beads.”

I have been led to anticipate a display of these beads during the late eclipse by the fact that some days preceding it a fine group of spots—visible to the naked eye through a London fog—were traveling towards the eastern edge of the sun, and should have reached the limb at about the time of the eclipse. The beads were observed by the Rev. S. J. Perry just where I expected them to appear. I have not yet learnt on which side of the sun they were observed and photographed by Lord Lindsay.

Baily’s first observation of the beads was made during the annular eclipse of May 15, 1836. That year, like 1870, was remarkable for a great display of sun-spots. As in 1870, they were then visible to the naked eye. I well remember my own boyish excitement when, a few weeks before the eclipse of 1836, I discovered a spot upon the reddened face of the setting sun—a thing I had read about, and supposed that only great astronomers were privileged to see. The richness of this sun-spot period is strongly impressed on my memory by the fact that I continued painfully watching the dazzling sun, literally “watching and weeping,” up to the Sunday of the eclipse, on which day also I saw a large spot through my bit of smoked glass.

The previous records of these appearances of fracture of the thin line of light are those of Halley, in his memoir on the total eclipse of 1715, and Maclauren’s on that of 1737. Both of these correspond to great spot periods; the intervals between 1715, 1737, 1836, and 1870 are all divisible by eleven. The observed period of sun-spot occurrence is eleven years and a small fraction.

I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of Lord Lindsay’s long-exposure photographs of the corona, for if they represent the varying degrees of splendor of this solar appendage, the explanations offered in Chapter xii. of my essay on “The Fuel of the Sun” will be very severely tested by them.

Yours respectfully,
W. MATTIEU WILLIAMS.

Woodside Green, Croydon, January 4, 1871.

THE COLORING OF GREEN TEA.

The following is a copy of my report to the _Grocer_ on a sample of the ingredients actually used by the Chinese for coloring of tea, which sample was sent to the _Grocer_ office by a reliable correspondent at Shanghai (November, 1873). I reprint it because the subject has a general interest and is commonly misunderstood:

I have examined the blue and the yellowish-white powders received from the office, and find that the blue is not indigo, as your Shanghai correspondent very naturally supposes, but is an ordinary commercial sample of Prussian blue. It is not so bright as some of our English samples, and by mere casual observation may easily be mistaken for indigo. Prussian blue is a well-known compound of iron, cyanogen, and potassium. Commercial samples usually contain a little clayey or other earthy impurities, which is the case with this Chinese sample. There are two kinds of Prussian blue—the insoluble, and the basic or soluble. The Chinese sample is insoluble.

This is important, seeing that we do not eat our tea-leaves, but merely drink an infusion of them; and thus even the very small quantity which faces the tea-leaf remains with the spent leaves, and is not swallowed by the tea-drinker, who therefore need have no fear of being poisoned by this ornamental adulterant.

Its insolubility is obvious, from the fact that green tea does not give a blue infusion, which would be the case if the Prussian blue were dissolved.

There are some curious facts bearing on this subject and connected with the history of the manufacture of Prussian blue. Messrs. Bramwell, of Newcastle-on-Tyne, who may be called the fathers of this branch of industry, established their works about a century ago. It was first sold at two guineas per lb.; in 1815 it had fallen to 10_s._ 6_d._, in 1820 to 2_s._ 6_d._, then down to 1_s._ 9_d._ in 1850. I see by the Price Current of the _Oil Trade Review_ that the price has recently been somewhat higher.

In the early days of the trade a large portion of Messrs. Bramwell’s produce was exported to China. The Chinese then appear to have been the best customers of the British manufacturers of this article. Presently, however, the Chinese demand entirely ceased, and it was discovered that a common Chinese sailor, who had learned something of the importation of this pigment to his native country, came to England in an East Indiaman, visited, or more probably obtained employment at a Prussian blue manufactory, learned the process, and, on his return to China, started there a manufactury of his own, which was so successful that in a short time the whole of the Chinese demand was supplied by native manufacture; and thus ended our export trade. Those who think the Chinese are an unteachable and unimprovable people may reflect on this little history.

The yellowish powder is precisely what your Shanghai correspondent supposes. It is steatite, or “soapstone.” This name is very deceptive, and coupled with the greasy or unctuous feel of the substance, naturally leads to the supposition that it is really as it appears, an oleaginous substance. This, however, is not the case. It is a compound of silicia, magnesia, and water, with which are sometimes associated a little clay and oxide of iron. Like most magnesian minerals, it has a curiously smooth or slippery surface, and hence its name. It nearly resembles meerschaum, the smoothness of which all smokers understand.

When soapstone is powdered and rubbed over a moderately rough surface, it adheres, and forms a shining film; just as another unctuous mineral, graphite (the “black-lead” of the housemaid), covers and polishes ironwork. On this account, soapstone is used in some lubricating compounds, for giving the finishing polish to enameled cards, and for other similar purposes.

With a statement of these properties before us, and the interesting description of the process by your Shanghai correspondent, the whole riddle of green-tea coloring and facing is solved. The Prussian blue and soapstone being mixed together when dry in the manner described, the soapstone adheres to the surface of the particles of blue, and imparts to them not only a pale greenish color, but also its own unctuous, adhesive, and polishing properties. The mixture being well stirred in with the tea-leaves, covers them with this facing, and thus gives both the color and peculiar pearly lustre characteristic of some kinds of green tea. I should add that the soapstone, like the other ingredient, is insoluble, and therefore perfectly harmless.

Considering the object to be attained, it is evident from the above that John Chinaman understands his business, and needs no lessons from European chemists. It would puzzle all the Fellows of the Chemical Society, though they combined their efforts for the purpose, to devise a more effective, cheap, simple, and harmless method of satisfying the foolish demand for unnaturally colored tea-leaves.

When the tea-drinking public are sufficiently intelligent to prefer naturally colored leaves to the ornamental stuff they now select, Mr. Chinaman will assuredly be glad enough to discontinue the addition of the Prussian blue, which costs him so much more per pound than his tea-leaves, and will save him the trouble of the painting and varnishing now in demand.

In the meantime, it is satisfactory to know that, although a few silly people may be deceived, nobody is poisoned by this practice of coloring green tea. I say “a few silly people,” for there can be only a few, and those very silly indeed, who judge of their tea by its appearance rather than by the quality of the infusion it produces.

With these facts before us it is not difficult to trace the origin of the oft-repeated and contradicted statement that copper is used in coloring green tea. One of the essential ingredients in the manufacture of Prussian blue is sulphate of iron, the common commercial name which is “green copperas.” It is often supposed to contain copper, but this is not the case.

Your Shanghai correspondent overrates the market value of soapstone when he supposes that Chinese wax may be used as a cheap substitute. In many places—as, for instance, the “Lizard” district of Cornwall—great veins of this mineral occur, which, if needed, might be quarried in vast abundance, and at very little cost on account of its softness. The romantic scenery of Kynance Cove, its caverns, its natural arches, the “Devil’s Bellows,” the “Devil’s Post-office,” the “Devil’s Cauldrons,” and other fantastic formations of this part of the coast, attributed to his Satanic Majesty or the Druids, are the natural results of the waves beating away the veins of soft soapstone, and leaving the deformed skeleton rocks of harder serpentine behind.

“IRON FILINGS” IN TEA.

I have watched the progress of the tea controversy and the other public performances of the public analysts with considerable interest; it might have been with amusement, but for the melancholy degradation of chemical science which they involve.

Among the absurdities and exaggerations which for some years past have been so industriously trumpeted forth by the pseudo-chemists who trade upon the adulteration panic and consequent demand for chemical certificates of purity, the continually repeated statements concerning the use of iron filings as a fraudulent adulterant of tea take a prominent place. I need scarcely remark that, in order to form such an adulterant, the quantity added must be sufficiently great to render its addition commercially profitable to an extent commensurate with the trouble involved.

The gentlemen who, since the passing of the Adulteration Act, have by some kind of inspiration suddenly become full-blown chemists, have certified to wilful adulteration of tea with iron filings, and have obtained _convictions_ on such certificates, when, according to their own statement, the quantity contained has not exceeded 5 per cent in the cheapest qualities of tea. Now, the price of such tea to the Chinaman tea-grower, who is supposed to add these iron filings, is about fourpence to sixpence per pound; and we are asked to believe that he will fraudulently deteriorate the market value of his commodity for the sake of this additional 1-20th of weight. Supposing that he could obtain his iron filings at twopence per pound, his total gain would thus be about 1-10th of a penny per pound. But can he obtain such iron filings in the quantity required at such a price? A little reflection on a few figures will render it evident that he cannot, and that such adulteration is utterly impossible.

I find by reference to _The Grocer_ of November 8th, that the total deliveries of tea into the port of London during the first ten months of 1872 were 142,429,337 lbs., and during the corresponding period of 1873, 139,092,409 lbs. Of this about 8½ millions of pounds in 1873, and 10 millions of pounds in 1872, were green, the rest black. This gives in round numbers about 160 millions of pounds of black tea per annum, of which above 140 millions come from China. As the Russians are greater tea-drinkers than ourselves—the Americans and British colonists are at least equally addicted to the beverage, and other nations consume some quantity—the total exports from China may be safely estimated to reach 400 or 500 millions of pounds.

Let us take the smaller figure, and suppose that only one fourth of this is adulterated, to the extent of 5 per cent, with iron filings. How much would be required? Just five millions of pounds per annum.

It must be remembered that _coarse_ filings could not possibly be used; they would show themselves at once to the naked eye as rusty lamps, and would shake down to the bottom of the chest; neither could borings, nor turnings, nor plane-shavings be used. Nothing but _fine_ filings would answer the supposed purpose. I venture to assert that if the China tea-growers were to put the whole world under contribution for their supposed supply of fine iron filings, this quantity could not be obtained.

Let anyone who doubts this borrow a blacksmith’s vice, a fine file, and a piece of soft iron, then take off his coat and try how much labor will be required to produce a single ounce of filings, and also bear in mind that fine files are but very little used in the manufacture of iron. As the price of a commodity rises when the demand exceeds the supply the Chinaman would have to pay far more for his adulterant than for the leaves to be adulterated. As Chinese tea-growers are not public analysts, we have no right to suppose that they would perpetrate any such foolishness.

The investigations recently made by Mr. Alfred Bird, of Birmingham, show that the iron found in tea-leaves is not in the metallic state, but in the condition of oxide; and he confirms the conclusions of Zöller, quoted by Mr. J. A. Wanklyn in the _Chemical News_ of October 10th—viz., that compounds of iron naturally exist in genuine tea. It appears, however, that the ash of many samples of _black_ tea contains more iron than naturally belongs to the plant; and, accepting Mr. Bird’s statement, that this exists in the leaf as oxide mixed with small siliceous and micaceous particles I think we may find a reasonable explanation of its presence without adopting the puerile theory of the adulteration maniac, who, in his endeavor to prove that everybody who buys or sells anything is a swindler, has at once assumed the impossible addition of iron filings as a makeweight.

In the first place we must remember that the commodity in demand is _black_ tea, and that ordinary leaves dried in an ordinary manner are not black, but brown. Tea-leaves, however, contain a large quantity of tannin, a portion of which is, when heated in the leaves, rapidly convertible into gallo-tannic or tannic acid. Thus a sample of tea rich in iron would, when heated in the drying process, become, by the combination of this tannic acid with the iron it contains, much darker than ordinary leaves or than other teas grown upon less ferruginous soils and containing less iron.

This being the case, and a commercial demand for _black_ tea having become established, the tea-grower would naturally seek to improve the color of his tea, especially of those samples naturally poor in iron, and a ready mode of doing this is offered by stirring in among the leaves while drying a small additional dose of oxide of iron, if he can find an oxide in such a form that it will spread over the surface of the leaf as a thin film. Now, it happens that the Chinaman has lying under his feet an abundance of material admirably adapted for this purpose—viz., red hæmatite, some varieties of which are as soft and unctuous as graphite, and will spread over his tea-leaves exactly in the manner required. The micaceous and siliceous particles found by Mr. Bird are just what should be found in addition to oxide of iron, if such hæmatite were used.

The film of oxide thus easily applied, and subjected to the action of the exuding and decomposing extractive matter of the heated leaves, would form the desired black dye or “facing.”

The knotty question of whether this is or is not an adulteration is one that I leave to lawyers to decide, or for those debating societies that discuss such interesting questions as whether an umbrella is an article of dress. If it is an adulteration, and, as already admitted, is not at all injurious to health, then all other operations of dyeing are also adulterations; for the other dyers, like the Chinaman, add certain impurities to their goods—the silk, wool, or cotton—in order to alter their natural appearance, and to give them the false facing which their customers demand, but with this difference, if I am right in the above explanation: that in darkening tea nothing more is done but to increase the proportion of one of its natural ingredients, and to intensify its natural color; while in the dyeing of silk, cotton, or wool, ingredients are added which are quite foreign and unnatural, and the natural color of the substance is altogether falsified.

The above appeared in the _Chemical News_ November 21, 1873, when the adulteration in question was generally believed to be commonly perpetrated, and many unfortunate shop-keepers had been and were still being summoned to appear at Petty Sessions, etc., and publicly branded as fraudulent adulterators on the evidence of the newly-fledged public analysts, who confidently asserted that they found such filings mixed with the tea. Some discussion followed in subsequent numbers of the _Chemical News_; but it only brought out the fact that “finely divided iron” exists in considerable quantities in Sheffield,—may be “begged,” as Mr. Alfred H. Allen (an able analytical chemist, resident in Sheffield,) said. The fact that such finely divided iron is thus without commercial value still further confirms my conclusion that it is not used for the adulteration of tea. If it were, its collection would be a regular business, and truck-loads would be transmitted from Sheffield to London, the great centre of tea-importation. No evidence of any commercial transactions in iron filings or iron dust for such purposes came forward in reply to my challenge.

The practical result of the controversy is that iron filings are no longer to be found in the analytical reports of the adulteration of tea.

CONCERT-ROOM ACOUSTICS.

The acoustics of public buildings are now occupying considerable attention in London. The vast audiences which any kind of sensational performance in the huge metropolis is capable of attracting, is forcing the subject upon all who cater for public amusement or instruction. There was probably no building in London, or anywhere else, more utterly unfit for musical performances than the Crystal Palace in its original condition; but, nevertheless, the Handel Festival of last week was a great success. I attended the first of these immense gatherings, and this last; but nothing of the kind intermediate, and, therefore, am the better able to make comparisons.

My recollections of the first were so very unsatisfactory that I gladly evaded the grand rehearsal of Friday week, and went to the “Messiah” on Monday with an astronomical treatise in my pocket, in order that my time should not be altogether wasted. Being seated at the further end of the transept, in a gallery above the level of the general ridge-and-furrow roof of the nave, the plump little Birmingham tenor, who rose to sing the first solo, appeared, under the combined optical conditions of distance and vertical foreshortening, like a chubby cheese-mite viewed through a binocular microscope. Taking it for granted that his message of comfort could not possibly reach my ear, I determined to anticipate the exhortation by settling down for a comfortable reading of a chapter or two, but was surprised to find I could hear every note, both of recitative and air.

It thus became obvious that the alterations that have gradually grown since the time when Clara Novello’s voice was the only one that could be heard across the transept are worthy of study; that the advertised success of the “velarium” is something more than mere puffery. I accordingly used my eyes as well as my ears, and made a few notes which may be interesting to musical and architectural, as well as to scientific readers.

Sound, like light, heat, and all other radiations, loses its intensity as it is outwardly dispersed, is enfeebled in the ratio of the squares of distance; thus at twenty feet from the singer the loudness of the sound is one fourth of that at ten feet, at thirty feet one ninth, at forty feet one sixteenth, at fifty feet one twenty-fifth, and so on; that is, supposing the singer or other source of sound is surrounded on all sides by free, open, and still air.

But this condition is never fulfilled in practice, excepting, perhaps, by Simeon Stylites when he preached to the multitude from the top of his column. If Mr. Vernon Rigby had stood on the top of one of his native South Staffordshire chimney-shafts, of the same height above the ground as the upper press gallery of the Crystal Palace is above the front of the orchestra, and I had stood on the open ground at the same distance away and below him, his solo of “Comfort ye, my People” would have been utterly inaudible.