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COPPER
that year his election to the Academy caused him to retire altogether from his public appointments. Meanwhile he continued to publish volumes of poetry at frequent intervals, including Les Humbles (1872), Le Cahier Rouge (1874), Olivier (1875), RExilee (1876), Contes en Vers, &c. (1881), Poemes et Recits (1886), Arriere-Saison (1887), and others. Of late years he has printed but little poetry, unless aroused by some occasion of public interest, such as the visit of the Tsar to Paris (1896). Besides the plays mentioned above, two others written in collaboration with M. d’Artois, and some light pieces of little importance, M. Coppee has produced Madame de Maintenon (1881), Severo Torelli (1883), Les Jacobites (1885), and other serious dramas in verse, including Pour la Couronne (1895). The performance of a short episode of the Commune, Le Pater, was prohibited by the Government (1885). M. Cop'pee’s first story in prose, Une Idylle pendant le Siege, appeared in 1875. It was followed by various volumes of short tales, by Toute une Jeunesse,—im attempt to reproduce the feelings, if not the actual wants, of the writer’s youth,—by Les Vrais Riches (1892), by Le Coupable (1896), &c. A series of reprinted short articles on miscellaneous subjects, styled Mon Franc Parler, appeared from 1893 to 1896; and in 1898 was published La Bonne Souffrance, the outcome of M. Coppee’s reconversion to the Roman Catholic Church, which has gained very wide popularity. The immediate cause of his return to the faith was a severe illness which twice brought him to the verge of the grave. Hitherto he had taken little open interest in public affairs, but he now joined the most violent section of Nationalist politicians, while retaining contempt for the whole apparatus of democracy. He took a leading part against the prisoner in the Dreyfus case, and was one of the originators of the notorious Ligue de la Patrie Frangaise. M. Coppee, who became an officer of the Legion of Honour in 1888, has a home at Mandres, near Boissy St Leger. He has published a collected edition of his poetry and another of his plays, and remains one of the most popular of French writers. Alike in verse and prose, he concerns himself with the plainest expressions of human emotion, with elemental patriotism, and the joy of young love, and the pitifulness of the poor, bringing to bear on each a singular gift of sympathy and insight. The lyric and idyllic poetry, by which he will chiefly be remembered, is animated by musical charm, and in some instances, such as La Benediction and La Greve des Forgerons, displays a vivid, though not a sustained, power of expression. There is force, too, in the gloomy tale Le Coupable. But he exhibits all the defects of his qualities. In prose especially, his sentiment often degenerates into sentimentality, and he continually approaches, and sometimes oversteps, the verge of the trivial. Nevertheless, by neglecting that canon of contemporary art which would reduce the deepest tragedies of life to mere subjects for dissection, he has won those common suffrages which he fully deserves, and which, where literature is concerned, he probably does not undervalue. Copper.—The sources of copper, its applications and its metallurgy, have undergone great changes. Forty years ago Chile was the largest producer, reaching her maximum in 1869 with 54,867 tons ; but in 1899 her production had fallen off to 25,000 tons. Great Britain, though she had made half the world’s copper in 1830, held second place in 1860, making from native ores 15,968 tons; in 1898 her production was only 640 tons. The United States made only 572 tons in 1850, and 12,600 tons in 1870; but she to-day makes more than 60 per cent, of the world’s total. Le Play estimated the world’s production in 1850 at 52,400
tons. It is now about ten times as great. The statistics for 1899, prepared by H. R. Merton and Co., are as follows, in English tons of fine copper :— United States . . . . . .262,206 Spain and Portugal . . . . 53,720 Japan ....... 27,560 Chile 25,000 Germany ...... 23,460 Australia ...... 20,750 Mexico ....... 19,335 Producers of under 10,000 tons each . 44,835 Total. . . 476,866 As the stock on hand rarely exceeds three months’demand, and is often little more than a month’s supply, it is evident that consumption has kept close pace with production. This extraordinary increase corresponds closely with that of pig iron, of which the world’s production was about 3,600,000 tons in 1850, and 35,921,617 tons in 1898. The world, therefore, has needed these two metals in almost equal proportions for the development of modern mechanical industry. Great Britain is still the largest copper consumer. The statistics of consumption for 1898 assign to— Great Britain . 139,704 tons, or 32T % of the world’s production United States . 120,348 ,, ,, 27‘7% ,, ,, ,, Germany . . 70,000 ,, ,, 16T% ,, ,, ,, France . . 42,652 ,, ,, 9'7% ,, ,, ,, The large demand for copper to be used in sheathing ships ceased on the introduction of iron in shipbuilding because of the difficulty of coating iron with an impervious layer of copper; but the consumption in the manufacture of electric apparatus and for electric conductors has far more than compensated. The scale on which modern mines are worked and modern smelters planned has reached proportions formerly unknown. For example, the Rio Tinto Company in Spain and the Anaconda in Butte, Montana, each handles between one and a half and two million tons of ore a year; and these companies, with the Calumet and Hecla, and the Boston and Montana Companies, make more than one-third of the world’s total. This has brought about a corresponding increase in the scale of the machinery used:—(1) mechanical calciners have in great measure taken the place of hand furnaces; (2) both reverberatory and cupola furnaces, as well as their auxiliary apparatus, have been enlarged ; and mechanical appliances have been adapted to both for the purpose of saving hand labour; (3) the pneumatic method in Bessemer converters of concentrating ore to metallic copper has been applied very extensively; (4) some progress has been made towards smelting ores by the heat of combustion of their own elements, through what is known as pyritic smelting ; and some new smelting methods have been introduced, notably the direct process of Messrs Nicholls and James ; (5) the electrolytic refining of copper has come into general use. Calcination and calcining furnaces.—As most copper ores contain sulphur, which can be driven off at low temperatures as sulphurous acid gas, calcination is a preliminary to smelting. To aid in extracting the sulphur mechanical agitation is almost universally resorted to. Three types of mechanical calciners are used, all developments of English inventions. In the White-Howell revolving cylinder furnace with lifters—a modification of the Oxland—the ore is fed and discharged in a continuous stream. The Bruckner cylinder resembles the Elliot and Russell black ash furnace; its cylinder tapers slightly towards each end and is generally 18 feet long by 8 feet 6 inches in its greatest diameter. Its charge of from 8 to 12 tons of ore or concentrates is slowly agitated at a rate of three revolutions a minute, and in from 24 to 36 hours it is reduced from say 40 or 35 per cent, to 7 per
