View report page

205
or penalty, as they are when the gas is shewn to be defective
at the regular testing places. The above facts point to the
necessity for an alteration of the law. The gas referees, it was
stated, approve of the testing of the gas by means of a portable
photometer; and the Metropolitan Board advised the Board of
Trade that statutory power should be obtained for that mode
of testing, so that the companies may be liable to forfeitures for
gas which the portable photometer shews to be defective in
lighting power.
The Board also suggested the expediency of an alteration
in the standard of light prescribed by the statutes. The statutory
standard is obtained by burning a sperm candle of six
to the pound, at the rate of 120 grains an hour ; and the gas is
required to be of such lighting power as to produce, when
consumed at the rate of five cubic feet an hour, a light equal
to that produced by sixteen such candles. A Committee,
appointed by the Board of Trade, reported adversely to the
continuance of the use of the sperm candle as a standard, it
having been proved that, in spite of precautions taken to
secure uniformity in the manufacture of the candles, there
remained considerable variation in their lighting power.
In the Reports of the Board for 1885 and 1886, no reference
was made to the important matters dealt with in the
above paragraphs, but in the Report for 1887, the subject was
again dealt with, and we were informed that in the interval, a
long series of careful and complete experiments had been made
by the Officers of the Board, under the Board's authority, with
the result that the Pentane air-gas standard, as devised by
Mr. A. Vernon Harcourt, one of the gas referees, appeared to
possess, in a higher degree than any other, the merits of
simplicity, accuracy and reliability.
It is satisfactory to find that the County Council, through
its Sanitary and Special Purposes Committee, have taken up the
subject earnestly, having addressed the Board of Trade (in