56 transactions of koyal scottish arboricultural society. 



Factories at Resicza, 



We left Buda-Pesth on the 16th July 1886, and traversed 

 the well cultivated Hungarian plain, down to TemesvAr and 

 Vojtek ; whence we took the branch line to Bogsan, and then the 

 narrow-gauge local railway, following the valley of the Berzava, 

 to Resicza, where the largest iron works in Hungary have been 

 established. 



The town, which stands at an altitude of 817 feet, has now 

 10,000 inhabitants, most of whom are in the service of the 

 Comimny, which has erected 1200 houses for their accommodation ; 

 it has gradually grown up around the high furnaces which were 

 first lighted in 1771, and have been working without intermission 

 down to the present time. But since the factories were originally 

 established, they have been very much increased by the addition 

 of reverbatory and other furnaces ; and since the Company came 

 into possession, they have undertaken the manufacture of 

 Bessemer steel, rolled steel rails, wheels for railway carriages, 

 steel sleepers, boiler plates, girder bridges, and numerous other 

 things. In consequence of this, the high furnace at Bogsan, the 

 iron mines at Moravicza, and the coal mines at Doman and 

 Szdkul, all of which are worked in connection with Resicza, and 

 are connected with it by means of 38 miles of narrow-gauge 

 railway, have been lai-gely developed. The building timber, mine- 

 props, and charcoal required for the Resicza factories are furnished 

 from 66,700 acres of forest, which cover the hills to the east and 

 south. 



Arriving at mid-day on the 17th, we were conducted by M. 

 Fery and M. de Bene, two of the Company's engineers, to a point 

 about three or four miles up the river, whence the logs of building 

 timber, brought down from the forest on trucks drawn by horses 

 or bullocks, are carried by rail into the town. The wood for 

 charcoal is floated down a distance of 28 miles, in the form of 

 loose billets, and caught above the town at a weir, the river 

 behind which was at the time of our visit crammed with them. 

 About a million and a quarter bushels of charcoal are annually 

 made at Resicza, nearly a million and a half bushels being turned 

 out of the kilns in the forests above Franzdorf 



The light railway, by which we made our excursion, was 

 constructed in 1872; before that year all transport between the 

 factories and the mines at Moravicza, Doman, and Szekul, as 



