_The Welsbach burner_ for improving the quality of gaslight, and economizing its consumption, is also well and favorably known. It utilizes the Bunsen burner principle to make a very perfect combustion of the gas, with the greatest possible heat and the least smoke, and then directs its great heat on to a refractory body which will not burn, but glows with a brilliant white incandescence. The Welsbach burner was brought out in 1885. The United States patent therefor was granted October 7, 1890, to Carl Auer Von Welsbach, No. 438,125. The Welsbach light is a development of the Drummond, or limelight, invented by Lieut. Drummond, of England, in 1826. This latter exposed a piece of quick lime to the intensely hot flame of the oxy-hydrogen blow pipe, which was invented by Dr. Robt. Hare in 1802. The piece of lime glows with an intense brilliancy approximating that of the electric light. The Welsbach burner, see Fig. 227, operates on the same general principle, except that the refractory body, which is heated to incandescence, is a tubular sleeve of netted fabric first steeped in a solution of the salts of refractory earths, and then incinerated by heat to burn out the textile fibre and leave the refractory earthy oxides as a skeleton of the fabric, and which is called a “mantle.” This mantle is suspended above the flame arising from a proper admixture of air and gas, and is heated thereby to a brilliant incandescence which furnishes the light. In the Welsbach burner the light seen does not proceed directly from the combustion of the gas, but from the white hot mantle. The light is a very pure white one, does not distort or falsify colors, and effects a great saving of gas. An important improvement upon the mantle is covered by Rawson’s patent, July 30, 1889, No. 407,963, for coating the mantles with paraffine or analogous material to toughen them and prevent them from breaking in packing and transportation.