een extracted that you would think could be extracted,
all the bits and scraps and scrapings and what not are put into a tank and
cooked and cooked until all is dissolved that can be dissolved. The
residual fat is skimmed off, and the last bit of glue, and the insoluble
matter at the bottom of the tank, go for fertilizer, and then, in the
packing-houses that don't know their business, the tank water is let run
away. But there is much valuable nitrogenous matter in those waters which
the first-rate packers utilize. And there is glycerin there.

In the old days the candle-makers who used palm-oil had their own troubles
with glycerin. If a candle was blown out, the smoldering wick used to
leave an offensive odor. It was the glycerin that caused this. Naturally,
the only thing to do was to take it out of the candle, and the next thing
was to get rid of it down the gulley into the creek. People complained, as
people will; but what else was an honest chandler to do? Latterly they
have been figuring on the matter, and some of them have come to the
conclusion that they used to let as much as two thousand dollars' worth of
glycerin get away from them every week.

In the last five years the soap-makers have learned that they can realize
more money out of the glycerin than they can out of the soap they make.
Some of this glycerin is refined, but the great part of the crude goes to
the manufacturers of dynamite, which is nitroglycerin mixed with
infusorial earth, so as to weaken it.

There is just as much acid after the glycerin is turned into nitroglycerin
as there was before. After it is washed out the nitro is left apparently
unchanged. It is not broken up, but it is on the edge of it. Give it a
knock and it all flies to pieces at once so suddenly that it will loosen
more dirt in a second than a hundred pick-and-shovel men could scoop out
in a week.

Wealth in Refuse Heaps.

Back of the tin shop there used to be a heap of shining clippings. The
heap of clippings isn't there now. If there are any bits of tin too small
to make the backs of buttons, they are pressed together to make
window-sash weights.

Nor is that pile of sawdust back of the sawmill any more. The butchers
want it for their floors, but that isn't the most economical use for it.
There are acetic acid, wood alcohol, naphtha, wood-tar (and all that that
implies) to be had from the distillation of sawdust--to say nothing of
sugar from birch sawdust. The reason