576 THE COLLIERY GUARDIAN. September 11, 1914 3,000 tons weekly. Work is brisk at the coke ovens, and local smelters are absorbing all the coke they can procure from the various by-product works. Yorkshire. Recruits from Dinnington—Municipalisation Again to the Front at Bradford—Coal Trade Battalions. The Dinnington Main Colliery Company’s generosity resulted in a fine addition being made to Lord Kitchener’s Army. A notice was posted that every man joining within one week would not only receive a bonus of £2 himself, but that adequate provision would be made for his wife and family in his absence. The result was a response of 250 men in two days, whilst later on, after the holding of a public meeting, 400 had come forward to join the Colours. The attention of the Bradford City Council was again directed to a municipal coal supply on Tuesday last, when Mr. A. W. Brown moved the following resolution :—“ That the Council, being of the opinion that such a course would be for the public benefit, hereby instruct the Gas Committee to expend forthwith out of such of the trading reserves of Corporation undertakings as can legally be applied for the purpose, a sum of £5,000 as a fund for the purchase of coal of the class and description usually consumed in working class dwellings in the city, such coal to be re-sold upon the terms of cash on delivery by the Gas Committee in quantities of 1 cwt. and upwards to householders in the city, exclusive of coal dealers, at a price that will represent the cost of the same, and the expenses of handling and administration, together with interest on the capital sum of £5,000.” At the meeting on Tuesday, however, Aid. Brown asked permission to withdraw the resolution. To raise and equip a Coal Trade Battalion at their own expense (excepting for arms and belts) was the decision come to at a meeting of the West Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association this week, subject to the obtaining of official sanction. Thirty officers are to be advertised for. The committee controlling the arrangements in connection with the new battalion is as follows :—The Lord Mayor, Mr. R. Beckett, Mr. W. Nicholson, the Vicar (Dr. Bickersteth), Mr. J. H. Wicksteed, Aid. F. M. Lupton, Mr. F. J. Kitson, Mr. M. E. Sadler, Lieut.-Col. J. W. Stead, Aid. C. F. Tetley, Mr. J. Gordon, Mr. F. S. Jackson, Mr. H. Barran, Mr. A. Lupton, Mr. A. W. Bain, the Bishop of Leeds ,Dr. Cowgill), the Rev. J. Anderson (president of the Free Church Council), Mr. C. Ratcliffe, and Mr. S. M. May (president of the Leeds Wholesale Clothiers’ Association). Lancashire and Cheshire. Extensive improvements on the surface in the shape of putting down additional screens have been carried out at the Tyldesley Coal Company’s Cleworth Hall collieries, Tyldesley, where new mines are being opened out. Notts and Derbyshire. Mining Education at Nottingham University. The arrangements for instruction in mining at the Nottingham University College during the forthcoming session, which opens on September 17, are in every way adequate. There is a preparatory course for students who are just entering on the study of coal mining, and are unable to take advantage of the preliminary classes provided in the county. In March an examination will be conducted, and scholarships in connection with the Saturday afternoon ^courses will be awarded to successful students who reside in the city of Nottingham. The Saturday afternoon course of technical instruction in mining is arranged to meet the needs of miners and mine officials who desire to qualify for under-managers’ certificates, and for those who wish to obtain the certificates of the Board of Education. The scheme is arranged in conjunction with the Notts County Council, and is intended to be an advanced course in continu- ation of the classes in mining promoted in the city and county. Certificates will be awarded to those who complete the. course and pass satisfactorily the examinations held in the various subjects at the end of each year of the course. Scholarships available for this course are granted annually by the college and by the County Council. The fee for each year has been by arrangement with the County Council reduced to £1 Ils. 6d. to residents in the city and county of Nottingham. The course of instruction given in the fourth year covers the ground of the subjects required for the deputy’s examination under the Coal Mines Act, 1911.- The college provides a course of instruction in coal mining to meet the needs of students reading for the colliery manager’s or first-class certificate. This course extends over three years. Courses of instruction, consisting chiefly of labora- tory work, will be arranged to enable students to meet the requirements of the Coal Mines Act. It is proposed to hold in the first term of the session a special course of 10 lectures in electricity applied to mining suitable for colliery managers, colliery electricians, and others who already possess a good knowledge of electrical engineering, and desire more advanced instruction to bring them into line with present- day colliery practice. The lectures will be of a thoroughly practical nature, and the more recent applications of elec- tricity to colliery work will receive special attention. At the Welbeck Hotel, Nottingham, on Saturday, August 29, Mr. Raymond Nadin, late manager of Gedling Colliery, Nottingham, received a handsome presentation from the officials and workmen employed at that colliery. The directors of the Stanton Ironworks Limited have given instructions for every facility to be afforded to all their employees to volunteer for military service. A cir- cular they have issued states that the situation of every employee who volunteers will be kept open for him, a bonus of £2 will be paid to each man accepted, and the company will also make an allowance of 10s. per week to every married man and 5s. per week to each single man. The circular concludes : “ The directors earnestly hope that a large number of the company’s servants will patriotically respond to their country’s call.” The Midlands. Under Sea Workings. At a meeting of the North Staffs branch of the National Association of Colliery Managers, held at Stoke on Saturday last, Mr. J. Morrison delivered a paper on ” The Working of Coal Seams Under the Sea.” Amongst many other instances of under sea workings, Mr. Morrison mentioned that in the Bo’ness coalfield on the southern shore of Lin- lithgowshire, the seams had been worked to their outcrop in three instances against the boulder clay at depths of from 137 to 400 ft. below high-water mark without accident. The annual shield competition in connection with the Cannock Chase centre of the St. John Ambulance Associa* tion took: place on Saturday last at Walsall Arboretum, when the winners were Leacroft Colliery, Cannock, with Harrison’s No. 3 Colliery second. The Countess of Dart- mouth subsequently presented the shield and medals at the Town Hall, Walsall, where Mr. H. C. Peake presided. Mr. W. Charlton (County Council mining instructor) said the register of the centre now contained over 1,500 names of men certificated as capable of rendering first-aid. Kent. The Dover Colliery—Lord Merthyr's Interests in Kent. At the Kent Collieries Company’s Shakespeare Colliery at Dover work is being vigorously prosecuted in connecting up Nos. 2 and 3 pits at 1,620 ft., where there is a 2 ft. seam of bright and very hard coal. The idea of the company is to work this seam for commercial and colliery purposes, and at the same time to continue sinking to the Four Foot seam at 2,200 ft. The connection between the two pits, with the equipment which is now being put in, will much simplify the further sinking by allowing the water to be drained from one pit into the other, and thence be dealt with by the powerful pumping plant. The Snowdown Colliery output last week was 1,355 tons, and Tilmanstone Colliery raised rather less than 1,500 tons. Sinking to the Hard seam in the Snowdown Colliery has been suspended, greatly on account of the labour difficulties created by the war, and only coal getting in now being carried on at this colliery, as at Tillmanstone. The death of Lord Merthyr recalls the great interest he took in the Kent coal enterprise practically from the com- mencement, and the loss of his valued support and advice will be a heavy one. Lord Merthyr had invested many thousands of pounds in the Kent .Coal Concessions group of collieries, and he always showed a particular interest in the East Kent Colliery Company’s Tilmanstone pits. He paid many personal visits to the mines, and sent his chiej engineer, Mr. Hutchinson, to make a very complete inspec- tion and report. Just before his final illness Lord Merthyr put up a further considerable sum of money towards the completion of the equipment of the Tilmanstone pits. Scotland. Catalysis and Colliery Explosions—Better Trade Conditions. A meeting was held on the 4th inst. at the offices of the Board of Agriculture for Scotland, St. Andrew-square, Edinburgh, in connection with the possible scarcity of pit- wood for the mines throughout the United Kingdom. The meeting was attended by representatives of the various industries concerned, and was held in private. Sub- committees were appointed to consider the question of the possibility of adjusting a scale of prices, and of estimating the quantity of home-grown timber in Scotland which will be available to meet the shortage created by the war. The Board of Agriculture invite communications from the growers of home timber and importers of foreign timber with reference to the matter, and they are particularly anxious to obtain information about the supplies of home- grown timber which can be offered for sale at this time. It is understood that Scotland alone consumes about 250 million lineal feet of pit props every year. The shipping trade at the Methil Docks was busier last week than it has been at any period since the war began. Naturally this shows that the trade routes are considered by the exporters to be a little safer, and there is a strong pro- bability that a greater amount of confidence in the ability of the Navy to keep these avenues of commerce open will gradually restore the export trade to its normal state. This would be cheering news for both the coal masters and the men in Fife and the Lothians. On the whole, however, it must be said that the coal trade in Scotland is brisker now than it has been since the war started. There are few dis- tricts in Lanarkshire and Ayrshire which are not working at least five days per week, and perhaps it is only in Fife- shire that irregularity of employment is most marked. At the annual meeting of the North British Association of Gas Managers, held in Glasgow on Thursday of last week, the third lecture under the auspices of the William Young Memorial Trust was delivered by Dr. Rudolf Lessing, Ph.D., F.C.S., London, his subject being ‘‘ Catalysis in Gas Manufacture and Application.” Deal- ing in the course of his paper with the industrial application of catalysis, Dr. Lessing said it w’as not surprising that they found amongst the numerous chemical changes involved in the carbonisation of coal and the working up of its pro- ducts many which were either wholly dependant upon catalytic action, and many for whose mysterious complexity catalysis offered a feasible, if not the only, explanation. Indeed, if they followed the course of treatment which coal underwent from the mine where it was gotten to the burner or chimney flue whence its gaseous remains escaped into the atmosphere (spent and bereft of all energy), there was scarcely a step in the manifold changes on which catalytic influences had not some bearing. Even in the operation of mining itself they could be traced. It was now well known that the cause of explosions in coal mines was to be found more in the coal dust suspended in the mine air than in the inflammable gas mixture called “ firedamp.” In fact, such dust was capable of being ignited and of propogating explosion in the absence of an inflammable gas mixture. The remedy first suggested by British mining engineers, and advocated by the Government Committee charged with the study of the question, consisted in the sprinkling of inert stone or shale dust on the surfaces of the hauling roads in the mine, which covered the combustible coal dust and rendered it apparently incapable of starting or propagating explosions. In 1882 Sir Frederick Abel laid emphasis on the view that the dust “ exerts a contact or catalytic action upon gas mixtures similar to that known to be possessed by platinum.” Whilst Abel’s interpretation of results had not found favour by those best able to judge particularly inasmuch as he saw an element of danger even in non-com- bustible dust—he (Dr. Lessing) inclined to the belief that his theory contained the kernel of truth, and afforded at any rate a plausible explanation of the ignition of ‘ com- bustible ” dust particles (without having recourse to the “ coarse gas ” hypothesis). It was quite conceivable that the physical structure of combustible dust would be such as to favour the occlusion, and thereby concentration and com- pression, of gases on the surface, which might go so far as to induce, on the slightest provocation, combination of oxygen and firedamp in the case of inflammable gas mix- tures, or spontaneous combustion of the coal substance, if air only was occluded, or both reactions will go side by side. The coal dust thus acted as catalyst by reason of its physical structure. It was only secondarily attacked by the heat evolved, and gave off combustible vapours by car- bonisation, which in its turn might be catalytically affected by the composition of the coal dust, particularly as regards its mineral constituents. The heat evolved would be suffi- cient to propagate explosion. Whether the salutary effect of non-combustible stone or shale dust might be due to its acting as a “ retarding ” catalyst wras a matter of specu- lation. Similar considerations applied to the case of the spontaneous combustion of coal, which caused trouble both in mines, where it led to “ gob fires,” and in the storage of coal in bulk. The older theory, that the presence of pyrites played an important part, had been practically discarded in view of the fact that the organic matter in the coal on oxidation by atmospheric oxygen furnished sufficient heat to explain the phenomenon of spontaneous combustion. But there was little doubt that this oxidation was largel y influenced by the chemical constitution of the coal, and the mineral constituents acted probably as catalysts in pro- moting or inhibiting oxidation. In this connection, some recent work by Hofmann, Schumpelt, and Ritter should be mentioned. They found that carbon of different origin— such as lamp black and even retort carbon — could be oxidised at temperatures below boiling point by means of dilute solutions of potassium chlorate when catalytically activated by osmium tetroxide or by solutions of bleaching nowder yielding carbon dioxide, mellogen, and mellitic acid. If they therefore took that coal was subject to catalytic influences even at ordinary temperature, when it was chemi- cally almost at rest, and when it was only in contact wTith air or traces of gas which one w’ould not expect to react wTith it to an appreciable extent, how much more must these influences assert themselves when coal was raised to temper- atures so high that its molecules suffered destruction beyond recognition, and that the bonds of affinity between its com- ponents were severed and the reactivity of the fragments reached its highest? It did not require a great deal of imagination to see that the conditions linden which coal was carbonised, and the complexity of the coal substance itself (which always included a certain amount of mineral matter), offered great possibilities for catalytic reactions. OBITUARY. We regret to announce the death of Sir Stephen Furness, Bart., which occurred on Sunday morning under tragic circumstances. Sir Stephen was staying with his wife at a hotel on the front at Broadstairs, and occupied a front room on the fifth storey. About 1 o’clock on Sunday morning he appears to have gone to the window to open it and, overbalancing, fell to the pavement 50 or 60 feet below. Sir Stephen, who was born in 1872, was the eldest son of the late Mr. Stephen Furness, of the Manor House, Berwick St. James, Wiltshire, and a nephew of the late Lord Furness. Educated at Mr. Davis’s High School, West Hartlepool, and Ashville College, Harrogate, he entered, at the age of 16, the office of Messrs. Furness, Withy, and Co., of which undertaking his uncle was chairman. He became his uncle’s right-hand man, and, upon the death of Lord Furness, succeeded him at the head of many commercial and industrial undertakings. In all, Sir Stephen was connected with over 30 concerns. He was chairman of Messrs. Irvine’s Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company, South Durham Steel and Iron Company, Neptune Steam Navigation Company, George Warren and Co., British Maritime Trust, United Shipowners’ Freight and Protective Association, Peareth Steam Shipping Company, George V. Turnbull and Co., Economic Insurance Company, British and Argentine Steam Navigation Company, London Welsh Steamship Company, and the Norfolk and North American Steam Shipping Company. He was vice-chairman of the Broomhill Collieries Limited, the Tyne-Tees Shipping Company, Richardsons, Westgarth, and Co., the Weardale Iron and Coal Company, the Wingate Coal Company, the Houlder Line, and the Empire Transport Company ; and a director of the Cargo Fleet Iron Company, Johnson Line, the Bank of Liverpool, the London Assurance Corporation, the North-Eastern Banking Company, the Northumberland Shipbuilding Company, and the Standard Protection and Indemnity Association. His Parliamentary career dates from 1910. In June of that year, following the petition against the late Lord Furness, he championed the Liberal cause in the by-election, and retained the seat. In December of 1910, at the General Election, Sir Stephen was again returned at the head of the poll. A baronetcy was conferred upon him by the King in June of last year. He leaves a widow, the'youngest daughter of Mr. Matthew Forster, of Mount Brown, Adelaide, South Australia, and a family of three sons and one daughter. Sir Stephen and Lady Furness were married in September, 1899. His son, Christopher, born in October, 1900, is the heir to the title. The Borderland poet, Mr. Lewis Proudlock, has just passed away at the age of 76 years. Pitman, poet and angler, he was one of the most familiar figures in the Morpeth district. He was employed at Stobswood Colliery, near Morpeth, until a few years ago, when he retired. The death has occurred of Mr. William Bryson Butler, managing director of Henderson’s Transvaal Estates Limited, which took place on Sunday evening, at The Croft, Addlestone, Surrey. Originally connected with the well- known firm of company solicitors (Messrs. Ashurst, Morris, Crisp and Company), Mr. Butler became associated with Mr. J. C. A. Henderson in the early days of the South African boom, and during the last 15 years has taken a prominent part in the organisation in London of several important South African enterprises.’ In addition to his work as managing director of Henderson’s Transvaal Estates, Mr. Butler was chairman of the Daggafontein Gold Mining Company Limited, and director of the Delagoa Bay Development Corporation Limited, the Tweefontein Colliery Limited, and White’s South African Cement Company Limited. The death is announced as having occurred at Ville de Rose, near Calais, on Sunday, of Capt. Lionel Hugo Palmer, late of the 3rd Battalion West Yorkshire Regiment. Mr. Palmer, who was 43 years of age, was the third surviving son of the late Sir Charles Mark Palmer, M.P., and was well known on Tyneside, where for a number of years he was identified with Felling Colliery. Capt. Palmer leaves a widow and four children.