The drying or stoving room is a large enclosed space heated by a “cockle” arrangement; rough scaffoldings are erected within this chamber, on which women mount to stow the trays on shelves fitted for the purpose. The trays and their contents remain in the heated atmosphere of this chamber for two or three weeks, by which time they become dry and ready for removal, to be packed in lumps for certain markets, or ground to dry powder and packed in barrels for others. Women are employed to fill and also to empty the drying or stoving chamber, and during this work they are fully exposed to its contaminating atmosphere. Hot and dry, and charged with fine dusty particles of white lead, it becomes a dangerous trap, and contaminates the blood of those engaged with its deadly poison. It is in this part of the manufacture that the principal damage to health occurs. This is the most laborious work; heat makes it very fatiguing, the atmosphere within this chamber being always much above the exterior air. Recent Government regulations have sought to curtail these and other evils in this manufacture. Women engaged in these stoves are ordered to wear overclothing, headdress and respirators. The general experience of their practice, notwithstanding Government regulations, is this; that they cannot work in them with ease and convenience, and more often wear the respirator around their necks than in front of nose and mouth. The excessive mortality in women who work in these stacks and stoving houses scarcely requires assertion. Few, even of those who employ them, know the extent of the deadly operation. Recently, medical men have made public that cases are within their knowledge of children born already contaminated with lead poison. Woman labour should surely be restricted by Government enactments in all such deadly occupations. We may sum up the whole matter as regards white lead making by the stack or Dutch method in a few brief words: It is a most tedious and uncertain operation; it is a most dangerous occupation for all concerned; it is founded upon no true principles of any kind; and of science its whole course is ignorant. White lead making is ruled by a “happy-go-lucky” philosophy. The representatives of this manufacture are completely ignorant of the scientific details relating to it, and hence we may not be surprised to find amongst them an enormous amount of ignorance and prejudice. Good white lead will not differ materially in its composition by whatever process it may be made, but it may differ seriously in its physical character, and in its fitness to produce a substance adapted to the uses to which white lead paint is applied. Good white lead is a compound which contains hydrate and carbonate of the metal, in the proportions either of one molecule of hydrate of lead combined with two of carbonate, or is made up of one molecule of hydrate with three of carbonate of lead. If we consider the first compound roughly PbH_{2}O_{2},2Pb CO_{3}