AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 155 



greater profit, then more perfect plans were made, and higher 

 furnaces, having greater capacity and more solid walls, were con- 

 structed." 



The reverberatory furnace had been employed in Europe from 

 the earliest times for the melting of brass and other metals ; and 

 for heating them dry wood was the usual fuel. Benvenuto Cellini 

 (about 1547) erected such a furnace for melting the bronze for his 

 statue of Perseus ; and he expressly states that he commenced the 

 melting with " pine wood, which, because of the oiliness of the 

 resinous matter that oozes from the pine tree, and that my 

 furnace was admirably well made, burned at such a rate, that I 

 was continually obliged to run to and fro, which greatly fatigued 

 me " ; and, after describing various troubles in getting the metal 

 melted, he finally completes that operation by the use of " a load 

 of young oak, which had been above a year in drying." 



From a French work on the construction of artillery * we take 

 Fig. 4, which is a very spirited illustration of a reverberatory 

 furnace at the moment when the metal is being tapped into the 

 molds. In this figure A is the furnace ; B, the furnace-doors, 

 which are made of iron ; C, chimneys of the furnace ; D, fire- 

 hole ; E, frame of carpentry above the pit, to which is attached 

 the pulleys and other tackle which serve to lower the molds into 

 the pit and remove the castings made ; F, pit (made in the earth), 

 in which the molds are placed ; G, " runners " with " gates " for 

 the metal ; H, workmen who split the wood and carry it to the 

 furnace ; I, workman who throws the wood into the fire : the wood 

 falls upon a grate which is at the bottom of the fire-box, three 

 feet or more below the part of the furnace containing the metal ; 

 K, cover, or paddle of iron, for closing the mouth of the fire-box ; 

 L, workmen who raise the furnace-doors by means of a lever ; M, 

 lever for raising furnace-doors ; N", workmen who stir the melted 

 metal with poles of wood, and who remove the slag and refuse 

 metal with tools called " rabbles " ; O, the master founder, with 

 the tapping-bar, opening the hole by which the metal is dis- 

 charged into the " runners " ; around him stand a group of inter- 

 ested visitors. After this description we are told that " the fur- 

 nace at Douay contains sixty thousand pounds of metal." This 

 would not be regarded as a small furnace even now. 



As illustrating how the metal was taken from the early blast- 

 furnaces for the making of " sowe iron " and castings of various 

 kinds, we reproduce f Figs. 5 and 6. In Fig. 5 workmen, num- 

 bered 1 and 2, are seen making an open mold of triangular cross- 

 section in the floor of the " foundry," in which is to be cast a sow, 



* Memoires d'Artillerie, 1047. 



f From Recueil de Planches, sur lcs Sciences, les Arts Liberaux, et les Arts Mecha- 

 niques avec leur explications. A Paris, 1765. 



