This, your own plan, is the one that I strongly recommend to you to proceed with, and, if necessary, to extend.
Perhaps you may find an additional shower bath near the colder part of the flue useful. I have no idea that steam passed into the hot part of the flue can be of the least service; but if passed out with the smoke through the stack, it may tend to convert such residual portion of sulphurous acid gas, exposed to fresh air, into sulphuric acid. Could you not likewise try a stream of cold water passing along the bottom of the horizontal flue?[84]
I do not think the advantages of your improvements can be fairly appreciated, till the effects of your smoke are determined by actual experiments and fair trials.
Yours, &c.
H. Davy.
TO THE SAME.
London, May 12, 1823.
MY DEAR SIR,
I return you my thanks for the copies you were so good as to send me of your work on the modes you have adopted for rendering copper smoke innoxious, &c. I have read it with very great pleasure, and I am sure there can be but one feeling, and that of strong admiration, at the exertions you have made, and the resources you have displayed, in subduing the principal evils of one of our most important national manufactures. I trust you will have no more trouble on this subject, and that it will only occur to you in an agreeable form, with the high approbation as well as grateful feelings of your neighbours; and that your example will be followed.
A Committee of the Royal Society has been formed for investigating the causes of the decay of copper sheeting in the Navy, as I mentioned to you. The Navy Board has sent us a number of specimens of copper in different stages of decay. We have our first meeting to examine them on Thursday, and I shall have much pleasure in communicating to you our results. I wish I could do it in person.