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7
pelled to seek house-room elsewhere. Thus the neighbouring
districts are becoming more overcrowded; and no steps
whatever are taken by the Midland Railway Company to
provide the poor people thus displaced with new habitations.
This is an evil for which I see no practicable remedy
under the existing law.
GAS.
It was not until late in the year that the new Gas Testing
Room at the Vestry Hall was fitted up with new and improved
Apparatus. Hence but few testings could be made, and
these could not be relied on till the working of the Apparatus
had been verified. No general conclusions can therefore be
drawn as to the quality of the gas from the few testings
made in 1876.
The purification of coal-gas from sulphur impurity, i.e.,
from sulphur compounds other than sulphuretted hydrogen,
involves a problem which for the last twenty years has much
engaged the attention of chemists and gas engineers;
and it is only within the last five or sis years that we
have possessed accurate knowledge of the means by
which gas could in any great degree be deprived of
any considerable amount of this sulphur impurity.
Within the latter period of time our knowledge of the conditions
under which the sulphur impurity may be taken out
of gas have undergone an extraordinary development; and,
thanks to Mr. Patterson, we are now possessed of a method
of depriving illuminating gas of about one-half of the sulphur
impurity which it used to contain when purified by oxide of
iron. This method consists in the use of lime in a peculiar
manner before the use of oxide of iron. The oldest method
of gas purification consisted in the use of lime in an empirical
manner, and the results were uncertain. The nuisance
arising from the spent lime, technically known as " BlueBilly,"
was so great that other means of purification were
sought. Such a substance was found in oxide of iron, by
the use of which not only was the nuisance inseparable from
the use of lime avoided, but the cost of purification lessened ;
and thus the gas could be supplied to the consumer at a lower
cost. The oxide, however, removed only one form of sulphur
impurity from the gas. Sulphur was still left in forms of
combination untouched by the oxide, and it is these forms of