-THE SCIENTIFIC PAPERS OF 



asked to prepare plans. One arrangement proposed was to run the 

 metal from the blast furnaces that were intended to be erected, 

 directly into an open hearth furnace. Those furnaces were to have 

 been worked with anthracite coke coke similar to what was used 

 at Creusot and he had no doubt that if coke of that description 

 had been employed at the time, instead of that made from the coal 

 available at the works, pig of sufficient purity to be run at once 

 into the steel-melting furnaces would have been produced. He 

 believed that with weak impure coke it would be impossible to 

 obtain regularity and such freedom from sulphur in the pig as 

 would give satisfactory results, and it appeared to him that the 

 success of that invention he would not call it, because it was 

 contemplated by Mr. Bessemer, and it must have occurred to most 

 of them as a possibility that the success of that addition or im- 

 provement in the Bessemer process, or the process with which his 

 own name was connected, must depend upon the working of the 

 blast furnace, and if they could get such results as had been pro- 

 duced at Seraing, at Creusot, and as no doubt were produced now 

 in this country, there was a clear margin of benefit ; but in order 

 to attain success, it would be necessary to work the blast-furnaces 

 with greater care than was usually exercised. At the time when 

 he contemplated using pig metal from the blast-furnace, he thought 

 it preferable to work with an open top ; in fact the blast-furnace 

 specified was almost identical with what Mr. Whitwell had just 

 stated was now used at Seraing. The open top was preferred, 

 because it gave them greater power of regulating the charge, and 

 he would throw out the suggestion to those eminent iron and steel 

 makers who were there present, whether it would not be worth 

 while to make a comparative trial between the open top and the 

 close top furnaces. No one would be able to give them sounder 

 advice on this subject than his friend Mr. Bell. A good metal 

 could no doubt be produced with a close as well as by an open top, 

 but it appeared to him (Dr. Siemens) there was a greater margin 

 of safety in working with the open top. With regard to the ex- 

 periment which Mr. Hackney had tried in using pig metal re- 

 melted with impure coke in a cupola, he did not wonder at the 

 want of success that had attended it for two reasons : first, the 

 molten metal would contain a great deal more sulphur than there 

 was in the pig charged, especially if No. 3 or 4 pig metal was 



