A machine for separating the soot from the smoke which
the fires of our manufactories yield, has been invented at Birmingham by Mr. Elliott, and used successfully for some months in the Mint there. The correspondent of the Pall Mall Gazette has examined it, and declares it to be perfectly simple and manageable. The smoke is intercepted on its way up the chimney, drawn by an air- drum into a box less than half- filled with water, and then violently beaten up with the water by fans, when the carbon is deposited, while the pure steam and other gases escape. The carbon thus obtained is a very valuable manure, and the gases which escape do not cause any pollution of the atmosphere. Why should not this machine be applied to all the manufactories in the country P If it were, we should escape not only the evil effect of the smoke in the atmosphere, but those terrible fogs which hang in mid-air a few hundred yards above our big towns, and darken our winters, and often even our summers, till life itself becomes a burden.
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