with Spanish swords of superior quality. Diodorus Siculus speaks of Spanish two-edged swords "exactly tempered with steel," made from iron which had been buried in the ground "to eat out all weaker particles of the metal, and leave only the strongest and purest." The notion is not yet quite extinct that rust first attacks and destroys the poorer and baser parts of the iron, leaving the finest and the best. The manufacture of Toledo blades, begun in prehistoric times, has continued till our day, attaining its greatest proportions, as the weapons attained their greatest celebrity, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

When Cæsar invaded Britain, 55 years before our era, he found iron in use there. Most accounts represent that the natives who met the Romans employed chariots armed with iron scythes. I have looked carefully through Cæsar for confirmation of that statement; but, though I find many references to the chariots, I find no account of the iron scythes. It is certain, however, that the Britons had iron. Some writers think that they did not make it, but obtained what they had from the Belga, with whom they had considerable intercourse, and who certainly manufactured iron. Others maintain that the Britons themselves made iron. Cæsar says of them: "They use either brass or iron rings, determined at a certain weight, as their money. Tin is produced in the midland regions; in the maritime iron; but the quantity of it is small; they employ brass, which is imported." Cæsar's stay on the island was brief, and his knowledge of it far from extensive or accurate. My own belief is that at the time of Cæsar's visits, iron had been made in Britain for centuries, and in considerable quantities. At various places in England, but chiefly in the Weald of Kent, the Weald of Sussex, and in the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire, have been found vast beds of cinder or slag, the remains of iron works which existed there in very early times. That these operations were carried on during the Roman occupation or later is evidenced by the fact that Roman coins and pottery have been found in the cinder. But I believe they were also carried on before the arrival of the Romans. The smelting operations were to a large extent conducted in wind bloomaries, without any artificial blast. These bloomaries were built on the tops of hills, with openings in the direction of the prevailing winds. The ore, mined with infinite patience and toil, was carried up to these furnaces on men's

backs, and the operation was wasteful of metal as of labor; for so little of it was extracted from the ore that in late years the slag has been remelted in modern furnaces, and the operation found remunerative. Now, the Romans had for centuries been accustomed to the use of the bellows in smelting iron; and if they had introduced the industry into Britain they certainly would have adopted the methods known to them and not have reverted to a ruder, more wasteful and more laborious one. I am therefore compelled to believe that when the Romans invaded Britain they found the wind bloomary in use. The hearths of more modern bloomaries have been found, with Roman ccins and remains among the ashes; and these are pretty good evidences that during the Roman occupation, improvements based upon Roman knowledge were introduced. Andrew Yarrantan says that "within a hundred yards of the walls of the city of Worcester there was dug up one of the hearths of the Roman foot blast, it being then firm and in order, and was seven feet deep in the earth, and by the side of the work there was found a pot of Roman coin to the quantity of a peck." Strabo says that in his day iron was exported from Britain. In the year 121 a great

Roman military forge or fabrica was established at Bath, the iron used at it being obtained at the Forest of Dean. At the time of the Conquest the same region was noted for its iron industry. Camden says that"in and before the reign of William the Conqueror the chief trade of the city of Gloucester was the forging of iron, and it is mentioned in Doomsday book that there was scarcely any other tribute required from that city by the King, than certain dicars of iron (a dicar containing ten bars and one hundred rods) for the use of the royal navy. In 1112 there were in the Forest of Dean 72 forgeæ errantes or movable forges, each of which paid a license of 75. to the crown. The Scotch at this period made no iron, and had none but that which they imported from the continent or stole in England. We are told that in a predatory expedition which they made in 1317, they found no iron worthy of notice till they came to Furness in Lancashire, where they seized all the manufactured iron they could find and carried it off with the greatest joy, though so heavy of carriage, and preferred it to all other plunder." Soon after the Conquest English iron began to be known abroad, and it was exported even to Spain. It was very dear, however, and highly prized.

Thorold Rodgers says that "no direct information about the seasons is so frequent as that found in the notices which the bailiff gives about the great cost of iron." It was the custom for the farm bailiff to buy the year's supply of iron at the great annual fair and to dole it out as needed, a blacksmith being employed to mend or make the necessary implements. The articles most frequently mentioned are plow shoes, or points to wooden plows, horse shoes and nails. Sheffield was already noted as a seat of the hardware manufacture in Chaucer's time, for of one of his characters the poet says, "a Shefeld thwitel bar he in his hose." Birmingham was famous for its production of swords, tools and nails.

Up to this time no great improvement had been made in the manufacture of iron. The furnace was a small square bloomary furnished with leather bellows, worked by manual power, and the product was a bloom, or loop, or wolf of malleable iron. A few of these furnaces yet remain in Spain and Hungary; and Overman says that they are from 10 to 16 feet high, 2 feet wide at the top and bottom and 5 feet at the widest part. An opening in front, called the breast, was kept open until the furnace was heated, when it was closed with brick, the ore and fuel were put in at the top and the blast was supplied by two bellows and nozzles, both on the same side." The product was called a salamander of mixed iron and steel weighing from 400 to 700 pounds, which was taken out of the breast and reduced to bars by hammers.

At the close of the 14th century the English blacksmith executed excellent work. Picton says: "Ironwork at this period was of the most elaborate description. The locks and keys, the hinges and bolts, the smith's work in gates and screens, exceed in beauty anything of the kind which has since been produced." The defensive armor made in England was also exquisitely wrought.

We are indebted to Germany for the development of the bloomary into the high furnace by which the product was changed from malleable to cast iron. The old bloomary had been gradually increased in capacity; but a limit was imposed upon that development by the impossibility of creating a strong blast by means of the bellows then in use. The same cause operated to render abortive early attempts in England to substitute mineral fuel for charcoal. Wooden tubs or cylinders in which a piston, operated by water, power,

expelled the air with considerable force, were invented by Hans Lobsinger in Germany, in 1550. From that time the furnace grew higher and wider, and the blast stronger. At first a portion of the ore was reduced to a bloom of malleable iron, or mixed iron and steel, and a portion flowed to the bottom of the hearth as cast iron. As the furnace grew still larger the ore absorbed more carbon from the fuel till the whole of it was melted. The old furnace was then known in Germany as a stuckofen and the high furnace a blauofen or flussofen, that is a blast furnace, because of the strong blast from the improved bellows, or a flowing furnace because the product was withdrawn in the shape of a stream of molten iron. In England, however, bellows of wood on the old pattern were made of great size and operated by water power, and these supplied a blast strong enough for the conversion of the ore into cast iron.

In Elizabeth's time the iron industry had so reduced the forests by the great consumption of charcoal, that repressive laws were passed; the production of iron was greatly lessened, and the industry continued in a low state till the use of mineral coal was introduced.

Still, during that very period, nearly all the improvements in connection with the iron industry were made in Britain, and it was the ingenuity and originality of her inventors, no less than the enterprise of her business men, which gave to England the preeminence in iron manufacture which she enjoys to-day. A highly important invention was that of rollers for converting blooms into rods, bars, or plates instead of performing that work by the slow and laborious. manipulation of the hammer. It is customary to say that Cort invented rolls in 1782 ; but I found in the library of the Franklin Institute at Philadelphia a copy of a patent granted to John Payne nearly half a century earlier. This patent is dated Nov. 21, 1728. The first part is for the conversion of cast into malleable iron by the application of ashes, salt, etc., to pig or sow iron while in the refinery fire, "which," the patent says, "will render the same into a state of malleability as to bear the stroke of the hammer, to draw it into barrs, or other forms at the pleasure of the workman, and those or other barrs being treated in the said melted ingredients in a long hot arch or cavern, as hereafter described; and those or other barrs are to pass between two large mettall rowlers (which have proper

notches or furrows upon their surfass) by the force of my engine hereafter described, or other power, into such shapes and forms as shall be required." In this document we have a faithful description of grooved rolls, and also an account of the decarbonization of cast iron in a reverberatory furnace-that is a process of puddling iron, instead of reducing it to nature by the slow and expensive process of repeated heatings and hammerings, as had theretofore been practiced.

Another candidate for the honor of having invented rolls was Major John Hanbury, who professed to have made the discovery in 1729, a year after Payne's patent was granted. About 1680 Andrew Yarranton was sent into Saxony to learn the art of coating iron with tin. The knowledge of that process is said to have been carried into Saxony from Bohemia by a clergyman, but its origin is lost. Yarranton succeeded in his mission, and brought the art into England, where the manufacture of tinned plates soon assumed considerable proportions, not only for home use, but for export. After the introduction of rolls the English plates were considered superior to those made on the continent, because they were rolled and not hammered, and were consequently of equal thickness throughout.

A great impetus was given to the iron trade in England by the labors of Henry Cort toward the close of the 18th century. He greatly improved the rolls and brought them into general use; and he perfected the process of puddling, bringing it substantially to its present perfection. It will be remembered that the product of the low bloomary was malleable iron. The carbon in the fuel was all burned away by a strong blast of air directed through the tuyeres upon the bloom as it formed. The process was slow and expensive, though it is to be noted that bloomaries only slightly improved are in use to-day and produce high grade malleable iron of first rate quality in competition with modern furnaces. When the high furnace was introduced it made the first production of iron much cheaper, but the iron was cast iron, and the expense of converting it into malleable iron in the finery was tedious and costly. Cort by the puddling furnace made the operation simple and very much cheaper.

Another highly important improvement introduced into England about the middle of the eighteenth century was the substitution of mineral fuel for charcoal. The attempt had been made a centnry