The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1872-08-24 00:00:00

Professor Cum Brown read a paper in which he pro-
postd to restore such old names as muriate of soda,
vitriolic acid, and some others.

Mr. Walter Weedon described some further improve-
ments in the manufacture of chlorine, which promise
to place that powerful agent at the di-poiia lof in-
dustrial chymists for many applications from which its
coat has hitherto precluded it. He said
• • • " " • •-• •

At present, the enly considerable application of chlorine
is to the production if bleachiug powder, of which shoot
50,00 tons per annum arc now tit inc manufactured by the
process which 3lr. Weldon brought forward at the meeting
of the Association at Liverpool two years ago. Previously
to the introtiutttien of that proems. for each ton of
bleaching powder made the-re was concerned nearly a
toll of native oxide et manganese, costing from £4 to
S-0, and there was sent into the watercourses from
six to seven tons of a strongly acid and other% lee ex-
tremely offensive residual liquor. Now, instead of polluting
with nth rt-sidual liquor the streams In their reapsetive
neiehbourboods, the m ansfacturers of about one-half the
total finmtity of chlorine made in this country recover, for
use again, the oxide of manganee from which it was taro-
enetat •, doing this at it cost of only a few 'hitting, per ton of
bleaching powder, soul so not only rt• Wiring a yo-ry consider-
aide saving, hut also rendering their manufacture wholly
innifendve. The one thing which the proem., left still to be
desired was a larger yield of chlorine from a given qeautity
of raw material employed. The raw material of the
chlorine nrmuttietnre is the hydrochloric acid obtained as
a bye•product of the manufacture of soda from common
salt. In making chlorine by means of native metro-
seas, there Is obtained only from one-sixth to one-fifth
of the chlorine contained is the acid troployed. Mr.
Weidoe's first process yields a little more than one-
fourth of the chlorine contained in the acid employed ;
but the stew process which he has now described
yields the whole of the chlorine, anti is capable of
tmadrupling the present production of chlorine without in-
creasing the present production of hydrochloric acid. All
the reagents which are employed in the process are con-
tinually regenerated and uscd over again, the only thing
consumed being coal. The cost of the coal is the chief coat
of the chlorine, and Mr. Weldon announced the extraordinary
result of the production of a ton of actual chlorine by means
of as little as three tons of slack,

General Strachey read a paper on "The Scope of
Scientific Geography."_

. _—
Sir G. Young, one of the British Commissioners to
Guiana, read a paper on the quest:on "Is the Asiatic
Emigration to the West Indira I kely to be a Perma-
nent Fact in Modern Geography?"
Mr. Eaton read a paper on "The Application of the
Wareop Aero-Steam System to the Locomotive
Engine."
Dr. Brandie delivered an interesting lecture on "the
Geographical Distribution of Forests in India."

A paper read was by Dr. Edward Smith, F.R.S.,
a Poor Law Inspector on the Local Government Board,
on 'the Economic and Nutritive value of the three
preserved foods—preserved Milk, preserved Meat, and
Liebig's Extract of Meat."
Dr. Smith said that the large proportions to which the con-
sumption of these preserved foods htel attained, ,ndered it
most desirable that tine public should understand their value,
both in the pecuniary and nutritive aspects of the question.
There were severaldifficulties in the way of this, for time had
not permitted the unscientific to judge of these products
by experience, while their composition was not a tired and
known quantity, but variable, and could be determined
only by chyrniial analysis. Reece it could not be surprising
that there was much ignorance and even misconception on
the subject, and in offering his own knowledge, he should
do so, Ile Rani, in a summary rather than in a detailed
manlier. Speaking on preserved milk, which was made in
England, Switzerland, and America, he first described the
manufacture of that wade in America and sold in England,
and then pointed out that one pint of the product repre-
sented four pints of milk. Four pints of milk would ci at,
according to locality, from 4d. to SI , but the "pint tin"
of preserved milk held only 16 minces, and not a pint,
which was equal to 20 minc, 5, and, making allowance for
the sugar which was added to the preserved milk, the weight
of the preserved milk was about 14 ounces, or two-thirds of
a pint, and represented a value of 2/.1. or 00 , according to
locality: but the price of the tin of preserved milk was 10d.
or is., and, therefore, was not an economical, but a dear
food. It was, however, he said, a useful invention, in so far
as it added to the fomi of man that which in many
localities would otherwise be given to the pigs, and there
was every reason to believe that it was most profitable to
the manufacturer. Another point he drew attenti.,n to was
that as sugar was cheaper than preserved milk, and had
different and Inferior properties, according to the quantity
used would the milk-value of the compound be reduced, and
the temptation to the manntaclurer was to use the maximum
quantity. The Aylesbury milk contained two ounces in the
pound, or 121 per cent., and it was sal .1 that there were other
kinds which contained three ounces, or nearly 20 per cent, of
sugar. It was possible to prepare the condensed milk "not
only with wholly new milk, but with skimmed milk, and with a
mixture of t'.e t o—skirumed and new. The latter was said
to produce the " Fnioothest" and best preserved milk, and
there could be no doubt that a considerable proportion
of the cream was first taken from the milk to he pressed
In order to make butter. Therefore the product, though
of value, was not new milk, and as in the important
use of milk—the feeding of infants and young chil-
dren—the fat was as necessary to nutrition as the caseine
and other elements, new unskinimed milk, and not
preserved " milk, was required. It was a signifleent fact,
he added, that the milk-eonoensing companies were also
butter makers on a large scale, and competition doubtless
I would show itself in these direetions—hicreared proportion
I of water and sugar, and lessened proportion of cream and
butter. Ile closed his remarks on this portion of the sub-
ject by pointing out that in preserved ndik we have a pro-
, duct of uncertain composition and nutritious value. [Our
; space precludes us from giving more of this interesting