The chemist or physicist will tell you the wondrous story that the black substance which you burn is simply so much light and heat and motion borrowed from the sun and invested in the tissues of plants. He will tell you that when you sit round your firesides the flame which enlivens you, and the gas which enables you to read, and which civilizes you, is nothing in the world but so much sunlight and so much sunheat bottled up in the tissues of vegetables, and simply reproduced in your grates and gas burners. Very few persons, I am afraid, realize this, which is one of the many stories which science in its higher teachings shows us--one of those fairy tales which are the result of the most careful scientific investigation. Of the hundred and odd million tons of coal which we in this country burn in the course of a year, about 20,000,000 tons are thrown on our house fires; 30,000,000 tons find their way into our blast furnaces, or are otherwise used in the smelting and manufacture of metals; about 48,000,000 are burnt under steam boilers; 6,000,000 are used in gas-making; while the remainder is consumed in potteries, glass works, brick and lime kilns, chemical works, and other sundries which I need not speak of. To go into the chemistry of coal is quite sufficient to take up more time than I have at my disposal this evening, therefore I will briefly touch on a few of the main points. Coal gas is made, as you are all aware, by heating coal or cannel, which is the special form of coal most valued for the purpose, on account of the high quality of gas it produces in cylindrical fireclay retorts. The by-products obtained in the manufacture of coal gas, the tar and the ammonia water, are nowadays scarcely less important than the coal gas itself. The ammonia water furnishes large quantities of salts to be used, among other applications, as food for plants. We thus restore to-day to our vegetation the nitrogen which existed in plants of primeval times. The tar, black and noisome though it be, is a marvelous product, by the reason of scores of beautiful substances which are concealed within it. Coal tar when distilled yields three main products: naphtha, dead oil, and pitch or asphalt. The naphtha on redistillation yields benzine, from which are prepared some of our most beautiful dyes; the dead oil, as the less volatile portion is termed, furnishes carbolic acid, used as a disinfectant and antiseptic, together with anthracene and naphthaline; all three substances the starting points of new series of coloring matters.