There have been some singular projects lately brought before public notice, relating to gas-lighting. One is White's Water and Resin Gas; which is proposed to be formed by heat ing small coal and fragments of iron in a re tort ; dropping water on theburning materials; and mixing the gases thus evolved with car buretted hydrogen formed by decomposing resin or fat. M. Jeannery's Soapsuds Gas was devised by him as an economical mode using the soap-suds or scouring water of ; woollen-factory at Mulhausen ; the sedimen from the suds is strained, mixed into a past with quicksilver, dried, and distilled in a re tort. A Portable Gas apparatus has been recently introduced, capable of making gas opt a small scale for isolated buildings, workshops .kc. The furnace, retort, and purifying vesse can all be comprised within a space of eigh or nine square feet. The fuel used is am kind of fat or grease ; and on this account i is conceived that such an apparatus might be valuable for emigrants and other residents in sheep or ox-farming countries. Anothe] novelty is Holliday's Self-generating Gas-lamp which, according to the comprehensive eulogy of the inventor, is 'smokeless, portable, safe durable, clean, of intense light, simple, re quiring no attention when once lighted ; sic fixings, pipes, or meters, consequent on the old gas plan ; nor liable to derangement ; and is applicable to every purpose.' It comprises a cotton-wick through which naphtha flows ; and this naphtha becomes converted into gas or vapour before it reaches the burner : it is a sort of medium between a spirit-lamp and a gas-lamp. An invention, which is now at tracting much attention in America, is Payne's Water-Gas ; this is a plan by which water is decomposed through the agency of an electro magnet; and the hydrogen is carbonised by being passed through spirits of turpentine, whereby it is converted into carburetted hy drogen—all this is scientifically possible; but whether it is commercially advantageous re mains to be seen.
Gas works have recently been constructed in Mexico ; and as there were difficulties in procuring the usual sheet-iron gasometers, Mr. Hancock has ingeniously contrived a gaso meter made of canvas saturated with india rubber. These gasometers are cylindrical bags, 12 feet diameter by 15 feet high, formed by two thicknesses of strong canvas cemented together by indai-rubber solution. Iron rings are placed at intervals to keep the bags in shape ; and the whole can be flattened to the form of a circular disc a few inches in depth for convenience of transport. The cost of each of these gasometers was about 551.
In Mr. Rutter's recent Treatise on Gas Lighting, it is stated that there are 560 pro. prietary gas-works in England and Wales, and 170 in Scotland and Ireland ; that these represent a capital of ten and a half millions sterling; that they all, taking one with an other, pay a dividend of about five percent. (a remarkable approximation to that which railway companies show a tendency to converge to) ; of that the quantity of gas produced is about 0000 a millions of cubic feet annually; that the coal t consumed to produce this gas is about 1,125,000 a tons ; that the cost of mould candles to pro - duce a light equal to all this gas would be ) eleven millions sterling ; that the cost of sperm oil for the same purpose would be , thirteen millions sterling ; that the price at 1 which the gas is sold is about 1,600,0001. ; and t thatthe number of persons constantly engaged in various ways in the manufacture and its t subsidiaries is about 20,000.
) There is a constant supply of new patents relating to the manufacture of gas, to the r forms of burners for consuming it, and to the , construction of meters for measuring its r quantity.