WHEN WILL THE IRON AGE END ?

West Coast Times, Issue 7282, 8 January 1889, Page 4

WHEN WILL THE IRON AGE END ?

"I was talking with Mr Chamberlain the other day," said Judge Tomkins, " wbo is a practioal man of our coal aud iron company. He made n startling; suggestion. tSaidbe: 'The time may come wbea all tbe iron minen of tins countiy will be abandoned. The most generally diffuwl metal on earth ia aluminium. It is fmnd I almost invariably in daj , especially in red ' o'ay. It is now extracted from clay by a j very expensive and tedious process, at a Cost of more than 500dols a ton. Someone will iuventa process for gtttiog aluminium 1 out of clay by a rapid and cbeap process. j Then farewell to iron mine : .' *' ■ "I asked him wb;,t wai tbe value of aluminum." 11 He replied thut it has three times the strength of utee), and only one-third its weight. This makes it, of course, the most valuable ot metal?. It wao only din- | covered in 1828. It i* bright, and it nevrr tarnishes. Louis Napoleon offered 6000 dols. for a proco-s for extraetiug it from day, and two unall tars of alluca'num were presented to hrn by a French chemist as tlie re.-uli It wa* puonmncly expensive, but Napolecn had works established for extracting it, and he used it as a substitute for t> c silver ea^le 1 ? that were borne above the armies of France' It hrs all the beau'y of silver, is more listing, stainless, an 1 has only onenfourth the weight of silver. The eagles of France are thus made more resplendent, more enduring, and seventy-five per cent lighter in weight. You look out for alluminum. Someone will yet invent a process for digging up common dirt and extracting therefrom this best of all metals." — Atlanta Constitution.