and ammonia will only rarely come into immediate contact with
each other.

When we burnt coke by a mixture of air and steam in presence of a
large excess of hydrochloric acid, the yield of ammonia certainly was
thereby considerably increased, but such a large excess cannot be used
on an industrial scale. I have therefore for the present to rest
satisfied with obtaining only half the nitrogen contained in the fuel
in the form of ammonia.

The enormous consumption of fuel in this country--amounting to no less
than 150 million tons per annum--would at this rate yield as much as
five million tons of sulphate of ammonia a year, so that if only
one-tenth of this fuel would be treated by the process, England alone
could supply the whole of the nitrogenous compounds, sulphate of
ammonia, and nitrate of soda at present consumed by the Old World. As
the process is especially profitable for large consumers of fuel
situated in districts where fuel is cheap, it seems to me particularly
suitable to be adopted in this country. It promises to give England
the privilege of supplying the Old World with this all-important
fertilizer, and while yielding a fair profit to the invested capital
and finding employment for a considerable number of men, to make us,
last not least, independent of the New World for our supply of so
indispensable a commodity.

Before leaving my subject, I will, if you will allow me, give you in a
few words a description of two other inventions which have been the
outcome of this research. While looking one day at the beautiful,
almost colorless, flame of the producer gas burning under one of our
boilers, it occurred to me that a gas so rich in hydrogen might be
turned to better use, and that it might be possible to convert it
direct into electricity by means of a gas battery.

You all know that Lord Justice Grove showed, now fifty years ago, that
two strips of platinum partly immersed in dilute sulphuric acid, one
of which is in contact with hydrogen and the other with oxygen,
produce electricity. I will not detain you with the many and varied
forms of gas batteries which Dr. Carl Langer (to whom I intrusted this
investigation) has made and tried during the last four years, in order
to arrive at the construction of a gas battery which would give a
practical result, but I will call your attention to the battery before
me on the table, which is the last result of our extended labors in
this direction, and which w