the distillatory portion, and produces the salt in a state fit for the
farmer, ready to be put on the land. This process consists in sending
the products of distillation through a vessel filled with wood sawdust
saturated with sulphuric acid. The ammonia becomes fixed and
crystallized in the sawdust, and is ready for use. There are many
works, both at home and abroad, to which the conveyance of sulphuric
acid is both difficult and expensive, on account of the cost of
carriage and the breakage which occurs; and thus in many such works
the ammonia is not utilized. This saturated sawdust process will, I
think, remove the difficulty; for I find that dry sawdust absorbs
double its own weight of sulphuric acid, and this could be conveyed in
the most ordinary casks in a damp state, and save all waste and
annoyance from breakage of bottles. In this state it could be used by
the farmer, or the sulphate of ammonia could be washed out,
crystallized, and exported in the state of salt.

In the remainder of this paper I have been assisted by my son Bruce,
who also assisted in the experiments that I have described. He has
since been engaged on the trials on a manufacturing scale; and I ask
you to permit him to read the concluding portion of the paper, in
which he will describe the process, and what he has done.

The process referred to in the foregoing portion of the paper is a
method employed for heating the liquor, whereby a chemical action is
brought into play, with the results already mentioned. This method
consists in passing the products of combustion of a furnace from a
clear fire in a hot state through a still containing the ammoniacal
liquor. The hot gases from the furnace impart their heat to the
liquor, causing the volatilization of the condensed gases, and at the
same time act chemically upon the liquor and evolved gases, so that