ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



and the qualities essentially improved. How any one of these processes may 

 succeed, we know not ; but there is great inherent probability that bar iron 

 may within a lifetime be converted into steel at least as cheaply, pound for 

 pound, as pig is now transformed into bar. 



Unless we are greatly misinformed, the difficulties under which the manu- 

 facture of steel labors in our country, arise entirely from the small scale on 

 which it has so far been conducted. The English steel works, although, we 

 believe, possessing to a great extent a monopoly of the famous Danamora 

 iron, are able to command the market only by the superior uniformity of the 

 product, and not by any actual superiority in the metal when properly car- 

 bonized. In the cast steel, for example, each bar, as broken and mixed in 

 England, is rapidly assorted into several varieties, some of which are finally 

 made into different qualities of steel, or if not, are compelled to undergo 

 somewhat different processes in the manufacture. The American Works, on 

 the contrary, too often adopt the temporary system of waiting for an order 

 and then carbonizing as well as may be and mixing all together a process 

 which cannot produce as uniform results. Different bars of iron even from 

 the same bloom will become steelified in different degrees, but it is easy to 

 see that all the lack of uniformity ever charged upon the American article 

 springs directly from the moderate scale on which the business is conducted, 

 and this again from a feeling of insecurity and uncertainty in the protection. 

 The great fact established beyond a doubt that we have the materials and 

 the skill, a settled feeling that the duties on iron and steel are not to be 

 meddled with, and giant establishments may be expected gradually to develop 

 themselves, which would soon put the business beyond the fear of foreign 

 competition. 



IMPROVEMENTS IN THE QUALITY OF IRON. 



At a time when so much competition is springing up in the iron and hard- 

 ware as well as most other trades, it is important that every hint that science 

 affords for the improved manufacture of such goods should be regarded with 

 every attention. The truth is now rapidly gaming ground that wherever 

 mechanical strength is desired, an alloy is preferred to a pure metal. One of 

 the greatest obstructions to the mechanical value of iron is its tendency to 

 crystallize. Whether the article be a monster gun or a ship's cable, the 

 result is the same. One would have thought that the success of Mr. Muntz's 

 " yellow sheathing" which has for ever superseded pure copper for shipping 

 purposes, would have turned the attention of the manufacturers of iron and 

 iron goods into the direction to which we point ; but much movement has not 

 yet been made by them towards that point. Now, the tendency of iron to 

 crystallize, there is no question, may be prevented by the admixture of other 

 metals. In almost every direction "Nature has placed certain metallic 

 masses, to which the name ' meteoric iron' has been given, on the supposition 

 that these masses have fallen from the atmosphere." The composition of 

 meteoric iron, wherever found, is chiefly of iron and nickel, the latter varying 

 from two to ten per cent., with small quantities of cobalt and (it is said) 

 chromium. Science has made artificial meteoric iron, and it has been tested. 



