iO-t On the Origin of the Blast Furnace. 



operative stock, and create a great competition among all 

 classes. 



Independent of this, the effects of the intermitting and im- 

 certain action of sucli a power on a large furnace, would entail 

 difficulties of the most ruinous nature; and the iron-maker, at 

 last forced to look out for a clieaper and more pei'uianent 

 blowing power, the rude machinery of the hand and foot 

 blasts would be enlarged, strengthened, and transferred to the 

 motion of the water-wheel. The advantages of local situations 

 would be abandoned, and the iron trade pass from the town- 

 ship in the neighbourhood of the mines, to the banks of the 

 adjacent streams. 



In examining the sites of the oldest blast furnaces situated 

 on the upper level of the brooks, the smallness of the stream 

 and the uncertainty of the sui)ply sufficiently indicate the li- 

 mited operations of the early pig-iron maker ; the small scale 

 on which the machinery was erected ; and the slow step by 

 which improvement in some ages advances. So long as there 

 was water in the brook sufficient to move the bellows with a 

 certain effect, the operation of blowing continued; when this 

 supply ceased, smelting was at an end tbr the season ; and the 

 labourers dispersed, some to the mines, and some to the woods 

 to prepare materials for another blast. 



The first furnaces seem seldom to have exceeded the height 

 of fifteen feet, and six feet at the widest diameter ; and the 

 whole capacity not more than four hundred cubical feet. In 

 after times, as machinery became enlarged and improved, and 

 the operations of the furnace better understood, the blast fur- 

 nace seems by common consent to have been removed to lower 

 levels, where the confluence of several streams gave a more 

 powerful and durable supply of water to the machinery. A 

 good stream of water near to wood, in almost every instance 

 determined the situation of the second and improved class of 

 blast furnaces ; locality to the mines was in many instances 

 abandoned, and the ores were carried a distance of eight or 

 ten miles to the fiu'nace. 



In the neighbourhood of the ancient forest of Sherwood, 

 this fact seems particularly illustrated ; the alluvial soil of that 

 district furnishing only a few specimens of blood-stone, could 

 not have supplied any quantity of oi-e for the smelting opera- 

 tions of the furnace : the supply of oi'e seems to have come 

 from the basset edges of the argillaceous veins of ironstone 

 which accompany the coal formation in Derbyshire. The 

 same circumstance occurred in Monmouthshire; the ores of 

 the Torest of Dean were in many instances carried to the 

 furnaces, a distance of eight or ten miles. 



The 



