Where water containing such mineral and suspended matter is fed to a steam boiler, there results a combined deposit, of which the carbonate of lime usually forms the greater part, and which remains more or less firmly adherent to the inner surfaces of the boiler, undisturbed by the force of the boiling currents. Gradually accumulating, it becomes harder and thicker, and, if permitted to accumulate, may at length attain such thickness as to prevent the proper heating of the water by any fire that may be maintained in the furnace. Dr. Joseph G. Rogers, who has made boiler waters and incrustations a subject of careful study, declares that the high heats necessary to heat water through thick scale will sometimes actually convert the scale into a species of glass, by combining the sand, mechanically separated, with the alkaline salts. The same authority has carefully estimated the non-conducting properties of such boiler incrustations. On this point he remarks that the evil effects of the scale are due to the fact that it is relatively a nonconductor of heat. As compared with iron, its conducting power is as 1 to 37½, consequently more fuel is required to heat water in an incrusted boiler than in the same boiler if clean. Rogers estimates that a scale 1-16th of an inch thick will require the extra expenditure of 15 per cent. more fuel, and this ratio increases as the scale grows thicker. Thus, when it is one-quarter of an inch thick, 60 per cent. more fuel is needed; one-half inch, 112 per cent. more fuel, and so on. Rogers very forcibly shows the evil consequences to the boiler from the excessive heating required to raise steam in a badly incrusted boiler, by the following illustration: To raise steam to a pressure of 90 pounds the water must be heated to about 320° Fahr. In a clean boiler of one-quarter inch iron this may be done by heating the external surface of the shell to about 325° Fahr. If, now, one-half an inch of scale intervenes between the boiler shell and the water, such is its quality of resisting the passage of heat that it will be necessary to heat the fire surface to about 700°, almost to a low red heat, to effect the same result. Now, the higher the temperature at which iron is kept the more rapidly it oxidizes, and at any heat above 600° it very soon becomes granular and brittle, and is liable to bulge, crack, or otherwise give way to the internal pressure. This condition predisposes the boiler to explosion and makes expensive repairs necessary. The presence of such scale, also, renders more difficult the raising, maintaining, and lowering of steam.