An artificial anthracite may be made by heating coal in a closed vessel of sufficient strength to resist the expansion of the gases that are formed. It differs from coke in being compact, is not porous, and therefore, of course, much denser, a given weight occupying less space. That we Englishmen should be about the last of all the coal-using peoples to apply anthracite to domestic purposes is a very curious fact, but so it is. In America it is the ordinary fuel, and this is the case in all other countries where it is obtainable at the price of bituminous coal. Our perversity in this respect shows out the more strikingly when we go a little further into the subject by comparing the two classes of coal in reference to our methods of using them, and when we consider the fact that our South Wales anthracite is far superior to the American. Our open fires only do their small fraction of useful work by radiation. Their convection is all up the chimney. Such being the case, and we being theoretically regarded as rational beings, it might be supposed that for our national and especially radiating fireplaces we should have selected a coal of especial radiating efficiency, but, instead of this, we do the opposite. The flaming coal is just that which flings the most heat up the chimney, and the least into the room, and, as though we were all struggling to destroy as speedily as possible the supposed physical basis of our prosperity, we select that coal which in our particular fire-places burns the most wastefully. If we had closed iron stoves with long stove-pipes in the room, giving to the air the heat they had obtained by the convective action of the flame and smoke, there might be some reason for using the flaming coal, as the flame would thereby do useful work, but, as it is, we stubbornly persist in using only the radiated heat, and at the same time select just the coal which supplies the smallest quantity of what we require. No scientific dissertation is necessary to prove the superior radiating power of an anthracite fire to anybody who has ever stood in the front of one. This is most strikingly demonstrated by those grates that stand well forward, and are kept automatically filled with the radiant-carbon.