(where complete combustion is approximately taking place), without liberating deleterious products.  I think I have said enough to show that no gas stove, geyser or gas cooking stove should be used without ample and thorough means of ventilation being provided, and no trace of the products of combustion should be allowed to escape into the air; until this is done, the use of improper forms of stoves will continue to inflict serious injury on the health of the people using them, and this will gradually result in the abandonment of gas as a fuel, instead of, as should be the case, its coming into general use.  The English householder is far too prone to accept what is offered to him, without using his own common sense, and will buy the article which tickles his eye the most and his pocket the least, on the bare assurance of the shopkeeper, who is only anxious to sell; but when he finds that health and comfort are in jeopardy, and has discarded the gas stove, it will take years of labor to convince him that it was the misuse of gas which caused the trouble.  Already signs are not wanting that the employers of gas stoves are beginning to fight shy of them, and I earnestly hope that the gas managers of the kingdom will bring pressure to bear upon the stove manufacturers to give proper attention to this all important question.

So strongly do I feel the importance of this question to the gas world and the public, that I freely offer to analyze the products of combustion given off by any gas stove or water heater sent to me at Greenwich during the next six months, on one condition, and that is that the results, good, bad, or indifferent, will be published in a paper before this Society, which has always been in the front when matters of great sanitary importance to the public had to be taken up.  And if after that the public like to buy forms of apparatus which have not been certified, it is their own fault; but I do think that the maker of any stove or geyser which causes a death should be put upon his trial for manslaughter.

In conclusion, let us consider for a moment what is likely to be the future of gas during the next half century.  The labor troubles, bad as they are and have been, will not cease for many a weary year.  The victims of imperfect education (more dangerous than none at all, as, while destroying natural instinct, it leaves nothing in its place) will still listen and be led by the baneful influence of irresponsible demagogues, who care for naught so long as they can read their own inflammatory utterances in the local press, and gain a temporary notoriety at the expense of the poor fools whose cause they profess to serve.  The natural tendency of this will be that every labor-saving contrivance that can will be pressed into the gas manager’s service; and that, although coal (of a poorer class than at present used) will still be employed as a source of gas, the present retort setting will quickly give way to inclined retorts on the Coze principle;