by all means, if you can get an adequate amount, but don't give it away." This decision, however, was a long way off a positive fixed sum, to which a "yes" or "no" was to be uttered by both sides. Time slipped on, and when the clock struck seven I found myself in a snug private room at the Euston Hotel. We had a nice little dinner, and, when the table was cleared, my host said: "Well, have you decided?" I said that I had thought the matter over, and felt that any sum must now be a sacrifice, but that I was prepared to sell on one condition, viz., there was to be no discussion of price. I would name what I had fixed on; would he give me a simple yes or no? To this he agreed, and then I said, "The sum I have fixed on is six thousand pounds." "Well," said Mr. Chance, "I will give you that sum for your patent; I shall not go down to Birmingham to-night, and tomorrow at 11 A.M., if you will call at Messrs. Hooper and Co.'s, my solicitors, in Sackville Street, we can settle the whole matter there and then." We met as arranged, a short agreement was drawn up, Mr. Chance handed me a cheque for £1,000 with a short-dated bill for £5,000, and we parted very good friends, mutually pleased with our bargain.

As a fitting tribute to the memory of Mr. Chance's able solicitor, Mr. Hooper, I may mention that I found him so shrewd and careful of his client, and so just withal, that I from that day gave his firm all my legal business as far as patents were concerned.

At this period I was deeply interested, from a scientific point of view, in the plate-glass manufacture. I was, and ever shall be, a great admirer of plate glass, which I hold to be one of the most beautiful and most marvellous productions of all our varied manufactures; and I must confess that, at the present day, I am disgusted with that idiotic fashion which rejects this splendid production for the small lead panes of a greenish bubbly glass, which, with difficulty is now made bad enough to imitate the early and most imperfect state of the glass manufacture; and which the bad taste -- or rather the absence of taste of the present generation admires and "tries to live up to."

It need not, therefore, be a matter of surprise that I felt a strong desire to cheapen and facilitate the production of plate glass, a manufacture which, in my enthusiasm, I attacked at all points, beginning with the preparation, sorting, cleansing and blending of the raw materials employed, followed by the novel device of a circular reverberatory furnace, in which the founding pots were arranged in a large circular chamber surmounted by a flatly-curved dome. There were also similar furnaces designed for refining the glass, having a crane revolving with the reverberatory dome of the furnace. The crane was, in fact, a veritable automaton, that would remove the one small cover, which, as the dome revolved, gave access in turn to a dozen large glass pots placed in a circle. The three arms or grips of the crane descended vertically into the furnace, and brought up the huge crucible, and when emptied, replaced it in three or four minutes, within half an inch of the exact spot whence it had been lifted. The casting table and all the annealing ovens were arranged in a circle, all accessible from a circular railway laid down in the great casting hall. I may also mention that every detail of the grinding and polishing machinery had undergone an entire change, rendering these operations more rapid and more accurate.

I feel, however, that I dare not trouble my readers by entering into further details. Suffice it to say that a revolution in the appliances and mode of working pervaded the whole manufacture, to properly describe which would fill an illustrated volume. Various portions of the scheme were practically tested; I built a circular furnace for six large pots and erected the automatic crane before referred to, which, like a living thing, dived for a minute or two into the raging heat, and brought forth noiselessly the pot of molten glass (as easily as the human hand could take a tumbler of water off the table), and returned it empty to the same spot.

I was well satisfied with the whole scheme, and wished a few friends to join me in the erection of a plate- glass works in London. My partner, Mr. Robert Longsdon, with his usual architectural skill and good taste, designed the necessary buildings for a complete works, embodying all the novel modes of conducting each department of the manufacture. On Plate XI., in Figs. 27 and 28, illustrations, showing an elevation and section of his design are given, just to save the whole project from oblivion. I have, at this moment, no sort of doubt that, had I convinced others of one-fourth of the improvements embodied in this new scheme, there would have been no difficulty in finding privately a few friends who would have joined