The Vielle Montagne Zinc Company in Belgium employ 6,500 workmen, and produce annually 32,000 tons of zinc. The John Cockerill Company, engine-builders, Seraing, near Liege, employ nearly 8,000 men. Krupp, the great engineer at Essen, near Dusseldorf, employs about 10,000 workmen; his works at Essen alone cover 450 acres, and 1,000 tons {65} of coal are consumed in them daily. The Anzin Company (Valenciennes) "is the largest coal company in the world, producing no less than 1,200,000 tons per annum, and employs 8,000 hands." The Chatillon and Commentry Iron and Coal Company (France), produce annually from 300,000 to 350,000 tons of coal and coke, nearly 70,000 tons of iron and steel, and employ nearly 9,000 workmen. At the Creuzot Ironworks (France), "the mineral concessions cover an area of nearly six square miles, the coal-fields nearly twenty-five square miles, the building 296 acres. There are nearly forty-five miles of railway between various parts of the works, upon which are generally running sixteen locomotives. The galleries in the mines are more than twenty miles long." 10,000 persons are employed in the works and the annual amount of wages paid equals £400,000.[11] Our practice with regard to original science has been very different from the plan carried out in Germany. Within the last few years great laboratories have been erected in Berlin, Leipzig, Aix la Chapelle, Bonn, Carlsruhe, Stuttgardt, and other places, at the expense of the State, and special provision has been made in them for original scientific research. A glance at the frequently published list of scientific investigations made in different countries will shew us that the Germans have been making a far greater number of discoveries in science than ourselves. Sir R. B. C. Brodie, Professor of Chemistry at {66} Oxford, speaking of his experience when a student at Geissen, in Germany, states: "I say that the enthusiasm and earnestness of the young men in the laboratory was quite unparalleled in my experience at Oxford. The dilettante sort of way in which things go on there is very inferior indeed to the way the German students study. At Heidelberg, I have been told, there are about eighty professors, and amongst those professors are some of the most eminent men in Europe, so that they have a staff quite unsurpassed."