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Ammonia, a valuable residual product of gas manufacture,
was present in the gas more or less frequently throughout the
year, but only in slight quantities. On no occasion was the
limit fixed by the Acts of Parliament, four grains in 100 feet
of gas, exceeded.
The Chief Gas Examiner being independent of the Company,
it is satisfactory to note that his reports on the daily
testing of the gas are so favourable.
Variation in Illuminating Power.— In the Annual
Report of the late Metropolitan Board of Works, for 1884, it
was stated—as the result of testing with a portable photometer—that
there are parts of London, the inhabitants of
which do not always get their gas of the quality which it was
thought had been secured to them by Act of Parliament; the
gas having been frequently found to be inferior in lighting
power to the prescribed standard, sometimes by as much as
one candle. There is no way of preventing this, the companies
in default being subject to no forfeiture or penalty, as
they are when the gas is shewn to be defective at the regular
testing place. 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