own business. In carrying out this matter, it is not necessary that a
specimen of fine workmanship shall be produced. A man usually appreciates
the wits which have produced what he has considered impossible. In purely
experimental work I think I may fairly state that the use of gas as a fuel
in the private workshop and laboratory has done incalculable service in
the improvement of processes and trades, and has played an important part
in insuring the success and fortunes of many hundreds of experimenters,
who have brought their labors to a successful issue in cases where, in its
absence, neither time nor patience would have been available. I need only
to call to your mind the number of new alloys which, for almost endless
different purposes, have come into use during the last eight or ten years.
I think the use of small gas furnaces in private workshops and
laboratories may fairly be said to have enabled the experiments on most,
if not all, of these alloys to be carried out to a successful issue.

I have been asked to say something regarding gas engines. The only thing I
can say is that I know very little about them. In my own works we have
about 300,000 cubic feet of space, all of which requires to be heated,
more or less, during the greater part of the year. For this purpose we
must have a steam boiler, and having this steam, it costs little to run it
first through the engine, and so obtain our power for a good part of the
year practically without any cost. It would not pay, under any
circumstances, to have two separate sources of power for summer and
winter; and therefore the use of gas for power has never been considered.

For irregular work and comparatively small powers, gas-engines have
special and great advantages; and in this respect they may, perhaps, class
with gas melting furnaces. If I wanted 1, or 10, or 20 lb. of melted
metal, I could melt and make the casting in less time and with less cost
than would be required to light a coke fire. There is no possible