After reviewing all that has been done, the conclusion that London cannot become a clean, smokeless, and beautiful city, so long as we are dependent upon open fire-grates of anything like ordinary construction, and fed with bituminous coal, is inevitable. The general use of anthracite would effect the desired change, but there is no hope of its becoming general without legislative compulsion, and Englishmen will not submit to this. One of the most hopeful schemes is that which was propounded a short time since by Mr. Scott Moncrieff. Instead of receiving our coal in its crude state he proposes that we should have its smoke-producing constituents removed before it is delivered to us; that it should be made into a sort of artificial semi-anthracite at the gas-works by a process of half distillation, which would take away not _all_ the flaming gas as at present, but that portion which is by far the richest to the gas-maker and the most unmanageable in common fires. We should thus have a material which, instead of being so difficult to light as coke and anthracite, would light more easily than crude coal, and at the same time our gas would have far greater illuminating power, as it would all be drawn off during the early period of distillation, when it is at its richest. From a given quality of coal the difference would be as twenty-four candles to sixteen. The ammonia which we now throw into the air, the naphtha and coal-tar products, which we waste, are so valuable that they would pay all the expenses at the gas-works and leave a handsome profit. We should thus get gas so much better that two burners would do the work now obtained from three. We should get all we require for lighting purposes and plenty more for heating; the intermediate profits of the coal merchant would be abolished, and our solid fuel of far better quality could be supplied twenty or thirty per cent cheaper than at present, provided always that the gas monopoly were abolished, “a consummation most devoutly to be wished for.” Mr. Moncrieff (who brought forward his scheme without any company-mongering, or claims for patent rights) estimates the saving to London at £2,125,000 per annum, over and above the far greater saving that would result from the abolition of smoke. In connection with this scheme I may mention a fact that has not been hitherto noted, viz., that we have perforce and unconsciously done a little in this direction already. Formerly London was supplied almost exclusively with “Wallsend” and other sea-borne coals of a highly bituminous composition—soft coals that fused in the grate and caked together. Partly owing to exhaustion of the seams, and partly to the competition of railway transit, we now obtain a large proportion of hard coal from the Midlands. This is less smoky and less sooty, and hence the Metropolitan smoke nuisance has not increased quite as greatly as the population.