204 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



state. Seven specimens, from different parts of the world, examined, 

 were found to be passive ; six reducing, or active ; and four which do 

 not become coated with copper immediately, but on which the reduction 

 gradually commences, after a longer or shorter contact with the 

 cupreous solution, and usually from one point, or from the margins of 

 the fluid. 



These peculiarities appear to have no connection either with the 

 presence of nickel, or the property of forming regular figures on 

 corrosion. I also found that an artificially prepared alloy of iron and 

 nickel, which on corrosion acquired a damasked surface, reduced the 

 copper from solution in the same manner as common iron. Whether 

 this state is proper to all meteoric iron on its reaching the earth, and, 

 as may have happened in the case of the active kinds, have only been 

 lost in the course of perhaps a very long period of time, and what 

 probable opinion can be formed of these phenomena must be settled 

 by experiments and observations of a more extended nature. 

 Pogg, Ann. 



PRODUCTION OF BRITISH IRON. 



MR. SAMUEL BLACKWELL, an eminent English iron-master, esti- 

 mates the gross annual production of iron in Great Britain to be 

 upwards of 2,500,000 tons. Of this quantity, South Wales furnishes 

 700,000 tons ; South Staffordshire, 600,000 ; and Scotland, 600,000. 

 The remainder is divided among the various smaller districts. The 

 number of furnaces in blast in England and Wales during the year 

 1850, was 336. 



ON THE COMPOSITION OF WOOTZ, OR INDIAN STEEL. 



WOOTZ, or Indian Steel, has for a long time been held in high 

 estimation from the supposition that the celebrated scimitars of 

 Damascus were made from it. A chemical examination was made of 

 wootz in 1819, by Faraday, who came to the conclusion that the 

 peculiar excellence of this steel depended chiefly on a small quantity 

 of aluminum combined or alloyed with it ; two separate analyses 

 yielding 0,0128, and 0,0693 of aluminum. On the other hand, Kar- 

 sten could only detect dubious traces of aluminum in wootz, and 

 Eisner attributed the improvement in the quality of the steel pro- 

 duced in Faraday's experiments, not to the small quantity of foreign 

 metals, aluminum, silver, platinum, &c., alloyed with them, but 

 entirely to the operation of remelting, and this seems to be the prac- 

 tical conclusion come to at Sheffield, Eng., at the present day. The 

 fact that the alloys produced by Faraday possessed a perfectly dam- 

 asked surface, closely resembling wootz, seems to militate against 

 the conclusions of Eisner. M. Breaut attributes the damask 

 of the Eastern blades to the crystallization of two distinct com- 

 pounds of iron and carbon, and draws a distinction between the 

 oriental damask, and that produced by alloys of steel. This 



