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238
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. The County Council, through its
Sanitary and Special Purposes Committee, took up the
subject, having addressed a communication to the Board
of Trade (in July, 1889) with a view to steps being
taken for (1) providing a trustworthy standard of light
(2) prescribing a standard photometer with which all official
photometers should be compared, and (3) giving legal force to
tests made with a portable photometer; the reasons for
which are fully set oat in the Committee's communication.
During 1891 the subject continued to receive the attention
of the Committee, and formed the subject of several reports.
The Boardof Trade, moreover, undertook to appoint a scientific
Committee to consider what the standard of light should be;
but having no fund out of which to defray the costs of the contemplated
enquiry, they asked if the Council would defray the
expense? a course the Committee were not prepared to recommend,
as the Council have no power to make any payment for
such a purpose. The Committee therefore recommended that
steps should be taken to promote a Bill "for substituting a
more exact standard of light for that now prescribed," and
this course, doubtless, would have been adopted, but for the
liberality of the South Metropolitan Gas Company, who have
undertaken to bear the whole of the expenses of a Committee,
which the Board of Trade have therefore undertaken to appoint.
The Committee is to be composed of two members nominated
by the Council, one by the Corporation, three by the London
Gas Companies, together with the three Gas Referees, and
two independent scientific men.
2. As regards Purity. The gas was free from sulphuretted
hydrogen throughout the year; and the quarterly
average quantity of other sulphur compounds present in the