336 THE SCIENTIFIC PAPERS Of 



country and abroad, to overcome these difficulties by filling the 

 mould from below, amongst which he would only mention Pinks's 

 process, which had received a considerable amount of public 

 attention, and realised to some extent the advantages of not 

 exposing the metal to the oxygen of the atmosphere, and of getting 

 the ingots of definite size and shape. There had been several 

 difficulties met with, however, in the attempts made to realise those 

 advantages, and Mr. Scott, who had had a considerable amount of 

 experience in the matter, had devised a mode of overcoming those 

 difficulties by running his metal through refractory material, which 

 could be easily heated up beforehand, and which was surrounded 

 by a non-conducting substance, namely, sand, and he had thus 

 overcome one of the difficulties, that of the metal setting in the gits, 

 and of not filling moulds right up to the top. Another part of the 

 arrangement which Mr. Scott brought forward was to have the 

 moulds divided longitudinally instead of casting them solid. That 

 really was going back to the old Sheffield plan of making the 

 moulds, and a very good plan it was. The difficulty connected 

 with it, in using such large moulds, was to fit the two parts well 

 together, and that Mr. Scott proposed to do by an elastic clamp, 

 which would bring the surfaces home, one against the other with 

 a great degree of certainty. He (Dr. Siemens) did not know that 

 the plan in its entirety had yet been tried, but he learnt, and in 

 fact knew, that it had been partially tried, and with, he believed, 

 very encouraging results. In fact, there could be no doubt that 

 the arrangement would work, and it was only by continued 

 practical experience that the exact amount of saving and con- 

 venience, as compared with present modes of working, could be 

 ascertained, but, as far as he could see, these advantages would be 

 largely in excess of any corresponding drawback arising out of the 

 method of arranging the ingots as Mr. Scott had shown. 



Dr. Siemens asked Mr. Snelus whether he considered that dead 

 melting depended upon manganese, as if so, it was certainly quite 

 a new principle to him. He had looked for the cause of dead 

 melting in quite another direction, and might mention, in support 

 of his view, that the Sheffield pot steel contained comparatively 

 little manganese, at all events much less than Bessemer metal, 

 which he mentioned, not with a view to disparage it, but as the 

 metal with which they were most familiar. His view regarding 



