r upon all that it lights,
spoiling movables, tarnishing the plate, gildings and furniture, and
corroding the very iron bars and hardest stones with those piercing and
acrimonious spirits which accompany its sulphur, and executing more in
one year than the pure air of the country could effect in some hundreds."
The evils here mentioned are those which have grown and have become
intensified a hundred-fold during the two centuries and a half which have
since elapsed. When the many efforts which were made to limit its use in
the years prior to 1600 are remembered; at which time, we are informed,
two ships only were engaged in bringing coal to London, it at once
appears how paltry are the efforts made now to moderate these same
baneful influences on our atmosphere, at a time when the annual
consumption of coal in the United Kingdom has reached the enormous total
of 190 millions of tons. The various smoke-abatement associations which
have started into existence during the last few years are doing a little,
although very little, towards directing popular attention to the subject;
but there is an enormous task before them, that of awakening every
individual to an appreciation of the personal interest which he has in
their success, and to realise how much might at once be done if each were
to do his share, minute though it might be, towards mitigating the evils
of the present mode of coal-consumption. Probably very few householders
ever realise what important factories their chimneys constitute, in
bringing about air pollution, and the more they do away with the use of
bituminous coal for fuel, the nearer we shall be to the time when yellow
fog will be a thing of the past.

A large proportion of smoke consists of particles of pure unconsumed
carbon, and this is accompanied in its passage up our chimneys by
sulphurous acid, begotten by the sulphur which is contained in the coal
to the amount of about eight pounds in every thousand; by sulphuretted
hydrogen, by hydro-carbons, and by vapours of various kinds of oils,
small quantities of ammonia, and other bodies not by any means
contributing to a healthy condition of the atmosphere. A good deal of the
heavier carbon is deposited along the walls of chimneys in the form of
soot, together with a small percentage of sulphate of ammonia; this is as
a consequence very generally used for manure. The remainder is poured out
into the atmosphere, there to undergo fresh changes, and to become