152 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



became unpopular, owing to the flowage of lands by their dam, 

 and the great destruction of timber for fuel. 



The Rev. William Hubbard, writing in 1G77,* says they were 

 " strenuously carried on for some time, but at length, instead of 

 drawing out bars of iron for the country's use, there was ham- 

 mered out nothing but contentions and lawsuits." Just about 

 this time Samuel Butler was writing his great poem in which he 

 makes Hudibras say : 



Alas ! what perils do environ 



The man who meddles with cold iron! 



a reflection which has been sadly appropriate in the case of too 

 many American iron-works. 



After the establishment of this first successful " furnace " and 

 " foundery " at Lynn, works for the manufacture of iron were 

 erected in other parts of New England, and thence-the business 

 spread into New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. 

 During the " French War " (1755) there were a number of furnaces 

 in operation at which " cannon, bombs, and bullets " were made 

 in great quantity, and many of these iron-works furnished similar 

 supplies to the Continental army during the Revolution. 



It is a matter of profound regret that no drawings of the 

 early iron-works erected in this country have been preserved ; 

 and we are therefore conrpelled to form our ideas of their con- 

 struction from such meager verbal descriptions as are given by 

 writers of the time, combined with illustrations of furnaces and 

 processes for the manufacture of iron known to have been used 

 at or near the same period in Europe. The iron-works at Lynn 

 seem to have embraced a " blast-furnace," a " foundry," and a 

 forge. The product of the furnace was in part made into " so we 

 iron," and the remainder used in " y e foundery," for the manu- 

 facture of hollow ware and other castings. In "y e forge," the 

 sow iron f was converted into " all sorts of barr iron." The 

 blast-furnaces in use in Germany at that time were from twenty 

 to twenty-five feet high, and had boshes, and openings at several 

 heights for the purpose of tapping out the cinder. In the Philo- 

 sophical Transactions for 1G7G, Henry Powle, describing the fur- 

 naces then in operation in the Forest of Dean, in Gloucestershire, 

 England, says : " The blast-furnaces are about twenty-four feet 

 square on the outside, nearly thirty feet high, and eight or ten 

 feet wide at the boshes. Behind the furnace are placed two huge 

 pair of bellows, whose noses meet at a little hole near the bottom. 



* The Present State of New England, 167V. 



f " Sowe iron " was an elongated mass of cast iron, tapering at each end, and having a 

 triangular cross-section; it was often twenty feet in length, and weighed from twelve to 

 fifteen hundred pounds. It was made by running the fluid iron from the furnace into a 

 trench in sand, where it solidified. 



