The Sun.
London, England, 1867-10-07 00:00:00

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HER MAJESTY.

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BALMORAL, Oct. 4.
The Queen drove out in the morning with Princess
Christian, and in the afternoon her Majesty, accom-
panied by the Princess and attended by Miss 'Mac-
gregor, pail a visit to M. and Madame Van de
Weyer, at Abergeldie.

Prince Christian and Prince Arthur, attended by
Colonel Ponsonby, went out for a drive of deer.
M. and Madame Van de Weyer had the honour
of dini❑g with the gleen and Royal family.

Oct. 5.

The Queen went out in the morning, attended by
the Marchioness of Ely, and in the afternoon her
Majesty drove to Alt-na Guithasack, accompanied
by Princess Christian, and attended by the llon.
Mrs. Gordon and Miss Macgregor.
Sir Stafford Northcote and Mr. llerbert Fisher
had the honour of dining with the Queen and the
royal family.

Prince and Princess Christian honoured M. and
Madame Van de Weyer with their company at din-
ner at Abergeldie.

-- -
The New Process for Making Chlorine.

TO TIIE EDITOR OF THE SUN.

SlR,—Owing to absence from home, I have only
j ust seen last Wednesday evening's Sun, in which
you reproduce the letter from Mr. Farrands and the
" testimonial" from six working men at the Ilford
Paper Mills, which are appended to Mr. Baggs's
communication to the Mining Journal of this day
week. Your readers will naturally suppose that
the letter and " testimonial" thus adduced by Mr.
Baggs are confirmatory of his allegation that he
had practised my process for the regeneration of
oxide of manganese from chlorine-residues before
it was patented by me. This natural supposition,
however, is contrary to the fact, that letter and
" testimonial" in reality not touching at all upon the
point with respect to which Alr. Baggs has endea-
voured to raise a doubt in the minds of the public.
That letter and "testimonial" do not refer to my pro..
cess at all, but have reference solely to a process which
bears very much the same sort of relation to mine
that is borne to the Bessemer process by the old
process of converting iron into steel, and which,
moreover, instead of having been recently invented
by Mr. Baggs, was invented by the late Christopher
Binks, and was patented, tried, and abandoned more
than twenty-five years ago. All this is distinctly
proved in a letter from me which appears in to-day's
Mining Journal, and a copy of which I have the
honour to enclose. As you have given the advan-
tage• of your circulation to the misleading " testi-
monial" from Mr. Farrands and the six workmen,
you will see that I should suffer serious injustice
unless you accorded the same advantage to the
conclusive proof embodied in my letter of the direct
contrary of what that " testimonial" apparently.
implies. That injustice I feel sure you will not sub-
ject me to, nor will you refuse to allow me hero to
inform your readers that my letter to the Mining
Journal is accompanied by letters from other
gentlemen, which conclusively establish that Mr.
Baggs has not yet published a single statement with
respect to this matter which is other than simply and
entirely false.—l have the honour to be, Sir, your
obedient servant, WALTER WELDON.
Raven Hotel, St. Helen's, Oct. 5.

[The letter above referred to by Mr. Weldon, as
having been contributed by him to the Mining
Journal of Saturday--• a letter followed by other
communications, upon the same subject, signed re-
spectively B. Coleman, C. Townsend look, and
W. Thomas —we regret that we cannot possibly find
room for in extent°. Having, however, in our last
reference to this correspondence, given verbatim
Mr. Farrands' note, together with the testi-
monial of the six workmen, we cannot, in simple
justice, do otherwise than at once, in answer
to Mr. Weldon's request, extract from his
lengthy communication to the Mining Journal of
Saturday at least the one paragraph in which he
takes occasion to comment, in the following terms,
upon those two last-mentioned documents :

" Permit me then, Sir, to point out—firstly, that
what Mr. Farrands and the six workmen testify to
has no bearing whatever upon Mr. Baggs's claim to
having invented my process for the perpetual re-
generation of the oxide of manganese employed to
liberate chlorine from hydrochloric acid. Mr. Far-
rands and the six workmen simply testify that Mr.
Baggs has regenerated oxide of manganese " as
precipitated by means of lime," and that he has
" used the manganese so restored" for " making
fresh chlorine." This, however, is nothing to the
point, which is not as to whether Mr. Baggs had ever
regenerated oxide of manganese at all, but is as to
whether, before I had done so, he had regenerated
oxide of manganese by the particular process
patented by me. By what process Mr. Baggs did
treat the comparatively insignificant quantity—first
spoken of as " some tons," but now magnified into
many tons"—of oxide which he regenerated at
the Ilford Mills and the Tovil Upper Mills, Maid-
stone, I shall mention presently ; all that I call at-
tention to for the moment is that Mr. Farrands and
the six workmen do not allege that he treated it
by the process which I have patented, and that
their evidence therefore does not iu the least sup-
port the allegation of Mr. Baggs that he had
practised that process before it was made known by
me."

And, now, having given the above :commentary
upon Mr. Farrands' note and the testimonial of the
six workmen, we shall hope that any possible sequel
to this correspondence, or controversy rather, be-
tween Mr. Baggs and Mr. Weldon, as to the priority
of their respective claims to the credit of having
invented the new process for making chlorine, may
be relegated to the more appropriate columns of
our purely scientific contemporary.—En. SUN.]