are found, on trial, to be of unequal strength, though perfectly uniform in appearance, and the purifying process may be deficient from a similar invisible cause, but these defects are immediately corrected as soon as discovered. Extraordinary severity of weather, prolonged for months, as during this season, may interrupt the flow of gas, and thus incommode so many consumers at the same time as to render prompt relief impossible. These are contingencies against which no foresight can effectually guard, and, during the past winter, they have operated as seriously against other gas companies, and thereby caused as much annoyance to the public, as they have done in Washington."

"With a capital of $424,000, actually and economically expended in the business, and unincumbered by debt, with works of acknowledged excellence, and capable of producing a supply of superior gas equal to any demand; with thirty miles of street mains, covering, as with a network, almost all the populous parts of the city, and so laid as to admit of any future extension; with one thousand six hundred and eighty-one consumers, and this number daily augmenting, our business systematized and now generally understood, the company have every motive for not only accommodating the public to their utmost requirement, but also for reducing the price of gas, from time to time, as the adoption of every valuable improvement and the increased consumption may justify."

At the present time, the company has two hundred and forty miles of street mains, nearly twenty-three thousand consumers, and an annual sale of gas of about eight hundred million cubic feet. It supplies gas to nearly five thousand public lamps, and pays forty thousand dollars for taxes and license per annum.

The officers of this company have been as follows: PresidentsJohn H. Callan, July 14, 1848, to April 14, 1849; Ulysses Ward, April 14, 1849, to January 2, 1851; Silas H. Hill, January 2, 1851, to June 1, 1856; George W. Riggs, June 1, 1856, to November 11, 1864; Barnabas H. Bartol, November 11, 1864, to November 15, 1883; George A. McIlhenny, November 15, 1883, to the present time. Secretaries

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1 George Alexander McIlhenny was born in the north of Ireland in 1835. the age of eight, he came to the United States. He was educated at the public schools of Philadelphia, and learned the engineer's and machinist's profession in the same city. After quitting the public schools, he paid particular attention to gas engineering, and at the age of twenty-two he took charge of the gas works at Macon, Georgia. He came to Washington and took charge of the Washington Gas Company's works on the 7th of March, 1865, and has had charge of them every since. He was one of the organizers and the first president of the Belt Line Railroad Company, and is the author