In brief outline, the old Leblanc process consists in the following operations: Salt is decomposed and boiled down with sulphuric acid. Sulphate of sodium is formed, and a large amount of hydrochloric acid is given off. This is condensed, and is utilized in the manufacture of the bleaching powder mentioned above. The sulphate of sodium, known as "salt cake," is mixed with certain proportions of small coal and limestone, and subjected to a further treatment in a furnace, by which a set of reactions take place, causing the conversion of the sulphate of sodium of the "salt cake" into carbonate of sodium, a quantity of sulphide of calcium being produced at the same time. The mass resulting from this process is known as "black ash." It is extracted with water, which dissolves out the carbonate of sodium, which is sold as such or worked into "caustic" soda, as may be required. The insoluble residue is the "alkali waste," which forms the vast piles, so hideous to look at and so dreadful to smell, which surround our large alkali works. The sulphuric acid required for the conversion of the salt into "salt cake" is made by the alkali manufacturer himself, this manufacture necessitating a large plant of "lead chambers" and accessories, and keeping up an immense trade in pyrites from Spain and Portugal. The development of the alkali trade in this country has been something colossal, and the interests involved in it and connected with it are so great that anything affecting it may safely be said to be of truly national importance, quite apart from what technical interest it may possess. The "ammonia-soda" process, which has played such havoc with the old style of manufacture, proceeds on totally different lines. Briefly stated, it depends on the fact that if a solution of salt in water is mixed with bicarbonate of ammonium, under proper conditions, a reaction takes place by which the salt, or chloride of sodium, is converted at once into bicarbonate of sodium, the bicarbonate of ammonium being at the same time converted into chloride of ammonium. The bicarbonate of sodium settles out at once as insoluble crystals, easily removed, marketable at once as such, or easily converted into simple carbonate of sodium, and further into caustic soda, as in the ordinary "old" process. The residual chloride of ammonium is decomposed by distillation with lime, giving ammonia for reconversion into bicarbonate of ammonium, and chloride of calcium, which is a waste product. The maker of "ammonia" soda works direct on the brine, as pumped from the salt fields. His plant is simpler and less costly, and he arrives at his first marketable product much more rapidly and with very much lower working costs than the maker of Leblanc soda, in spite of all the great mechanical improvements which have of late years been introduced into the old process, and which have cheapened its work.