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Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3148, 30 July 1881, Page 2

The following is from the latest number of the British Trade Journal, received by the last English mail:—Any special reference to gas at the present moment naturally induces remarks about the electric light, and the effect its general adoption will have upon the consumption of gas. We will endeavor briefly to deal with this popular question, which exercises somewhat seriously the minds of quidnuncs especially. Doubtless the electric will be used to a great extent for certain purposes, but assuredly gas will be burnt as before, and the demand will not, we believe, be diminished, but probably increased, and its application extended in directions yet undeveloped. When the steam-engine was first introduced it was surmised by a class of shortsighted persons, who continually cry " Woe, woe," when any great innovation forces itself to the front, that "there would be no work for horses." The result is this day apparent in the increased number of horses required. We are now going to substitute for steam, if we can, electricity and atmospheric pressure. Thus we advance as science progresses. The elctric light is adapted for illumination under certain circumstances, but we shall still consume gas even as we burn candles, the manufacture of which, it was said, was doomed to the limbo of obscurity; we also burn an immense quantity of oil or paraffin, although gas is almost everywhere hid down. The fact is that there is ample scope for the electric light and gas too, and if the cansumption of the latter be affected in one way, it will be increased enormously as the demand for light also for heat and motive power increases. For purposes of heating gas is becoming used more extensively every year, and when arrangents for it are perfected, cooking by gas will become almost universal.