266 



NATURE 



[April 28, 19 10 



*' early in the Christian era, if not before its commence- 

 ment " ; but this was doubtless made, like early bronze, 

 by mixing the ores before or in the process of smelting. 

 Bj' the middle of the century considerable progress had 

 been made in its manufacture. Though brass, native and 

 imported, was' known in England long before, it is believed 

 that it was not until the reign of Elizabeth that its manu- 

 facture was seriously undertaken. From that time forward 

 a good deal of brass seems to have been made from 

 British ores, and a goodly number of brass articles pro- 

 duced. 



Tin. 

 Tin is certainly the most ancient of British exports. 

 It was mined in this country before Britain was known to 

 the Romans, and was brought by the Phoenicians from 

 Cornwall and Devon, the Cassiterides (tin-lands), far 

 beyond the Pillars of Hercules. For centuries England 

 had what was almost a monopolv in supplying tin to the 

 civilised world, the amount mined in Cornwall and the 

 west of England growing steadily both in bulk and value 

 until the discovery by the Dutch of large supplies of tin 



, in Banka, Sumatra, whence it was first imported into 

 Europe about 17S7. 



The most important application of tin is to the coating 

 of iron-plate, to produce what is known as tin-plate or 

 tinned plate, and is now popularly termed tin. Until the 

 middle of the seventeenth century this manufacture was 

 not known in England. English tin was exported to 

 Saxony, \yhere it was used to coat plates, which were 

 sent to England. That ingenious projecter and author, 

 Yarranton, found out the German methods, and established 

 a factory in the Forest of Dean, where plates were made 

 better, it is said, than the German productions. It seems 

 likely that the secret lay in rolling out the iron, previous 

 attempts having been made with hammered plates. From 



, this date the manufacture of tin-plate, and the use of rolls 

 for the purpose, appears to have been established in 

 England. 



head. 

 The reduction of lead from its ores is a comparatively 

 simple process, and it might not be untrue to say that the 

 process has been rather developed than radicallv changed 

 from the time when Pliny referred to British lead as used 

 . for the manufacture of lead pipes in Rome. Down to 

 some time in the seventeenth centurv wind was relied 

 upon ^ for_ feeding the Derbyshire furnaces, which (as in 

 Pliny's time) were placed on high ground to catch the 

 breezes. Later, bellows driven by water-wheels were 

 employed. Cupola furnaces were introduced into Derby- 

 shire from Wales about 1747. These are identical with 

 those now used. Coal was emploved for smelting lead in 

 the seventeenth century, there being two patents (1678 and 

 1690) granted for this privilege. 



Coal. 



The use of coal for fuel is referred to in a grant of 



land to the Abbey of Peterborough in a-d. 853. Records 



referring to the existence of collieries in Scotland go back 



as far as the end of the twelfth centurv, and in the 



- thirteenth there is evidence that coal was brought to 



; London by sea from the north. Such coal, besides being 



used for domestic purposes, was at first used for lime 



burning, soon after in smiths' forges, and in later times 



for. the smelting of copper and lead, in furnaces for the 



. manufacture of pottery and glass, for drving malt, for 



making salt, by brewers, and for other industrial purposes. 



Curiously enough, many of the earlier references to coal 



are due to its objectionable qualities. Its smoke and 



smell were disapproved of, and not without reason. In 



1306 there was a Royal Proclamation against the use of 



coal in London, and there were manv complaints about its 



smoke in later years. As its employment became more 



popular it became an article of commerce, and in 1563 an 



Act of Parliament prohibited its export, either in the form 



of ballast or otherwise. By the middle of the century it 



was, of course, worked on a large scale. As the shafts 



of the collieries grew deeper, in the effort to compiv with 



the growing demand, fresh difficulties were encountered. 



The deepest shaft in 1754 appears to have been that at 



XO. 21 13, VOL. 83] 



Whitehaven, which , reached .1 depth of 130 . fathoms (( 

 about 800 feet), and this must have been q'uite exception;il 

 for probably hardly any coal was worked. at a. great' 

 depth than 100 fathoms.'- - 



Early in the eighteenth century fire-damp began .to. claim 

 its victims. Its existence : had been recognised long, before, 

 but very little was known about its nature. . .There : were 

 in the first half of the century several serious, explosions 

 with a considerable loss of life. The earliest, effort . to 

 improve matters by ventilation was made about. 1732, .whfji 

 the first attempt. was made to produce a draught .by >mcans 

 of furnaces. Between that date and 1754 consideraL! 

 improvements were made in ventilation, arid at 'that tim 

 or a few years later, something like the modern systeni 

 had been introduced by Spedding. • .. . . : 



The great danger, connected with fire-damp ,was,,.ot 

 course, the use of naked lights. From the earliest tinv"- 

 lamps and candles were employed, and miners had gotit' 

 be very- expert in detecting the presence of fire-damp b 

 the use of the latter." When it was found that the u- 

 of naked lights was dangerous, attempts were made 1 

 provide a light which would not fire the inflammable gn- 

 The best of these was the " steel mill," the date of whiili 

 is probably somewhere between 1740 and 1750. This 

 apparatus was introduced by Spedding in consequence of 

 some experiments by Sir James Lowther, which seem<?d 

 to show that fire-damp was not ignited by sparks from 

 a flint and steel. It. consisted of a steel disc rotated. by 

 hand, against which a flint was held. The result was ;:i 

 shower of' sparks, which gave a very faint, dim light, and 

 for long it was erroneously believed that the apparatus 

 was not capable of firing the gas. Nothing better, how- 

 ever, was known until Dr. Clanriy's ' lamp in 1812, th 

 precursor of the safety lamps of Davy and Stephenson. 



Another great difficulty — perhaps the greatest' felt by the 

 miner — was that of keeping the mines free from water. 

 From the early part of the century Newcomen's steam, or 

 rather atmospheric, engine had been successfully used for 

 this purpose, all other attempts at pumping having been 

 found quite unable to deal even with the short shafts then 

 existing. 



In the earliest coal mines the mineral had been raised 

 to the surface by men climbing ladders, or in baskets 

 worked by horse-gins ; but the successful use of the steam 

 engine for pumping suggested its application to haulage, 

 and about 1753 attempts were being, made to apply it to 

 this purpose. In the earliest of these " a basket of coals 

 was raised by the descent of a bucket of water, the steam 

 engine being employed to re-pump the water, to the 

 surface.'" ■ 



Later in the century the hardly less clumsy method was 

 employed of pumping water to a. height, and causing it to 

 work water-wheels, which served to wind the cpal to 

 the surface. This roundabout and costly device was 

 coming largely into use, when the application of the crank 

 to the steam engine enabled the necessary rotation of th'' 

 winding drum to be obtained direct from the engine. 



Glass. 



From a very early date glass had been manufactured in 

 many places in England, and on a . considerable scale. 

 Most of this early glass was inferior, greenish in colour, 

 and principally used for windows, though drinkini: 

 vessels of tumbler shape were also produced of the sam 

 material.* At the date with which we are dealing larg- 

 amounts of this same glass were being made in London, 

 Newcastle, Birmingham, and elsewhere. • . 



The materials employed were sand or " rock " (ground 

 sandstone) and a crude alkali obtained from the ashes, of 

 plants. In this country the best alkali was obtained from 

 burning kelp, and the collection and burning of .that plant 

 was a considerable industry on the . coasts of Ireland, and 

 Scotland until the discoveries of Leblanc in 1792 .enabled 

 salt to be converted into carbonate of soda, and so put 

 an end to the treatment of ashes for the potash, and. soda 

 they contain. For making the commonest sort .of green 

 glass for glazing purposes the ashes of various .plants vyere 



1 Wills' Cantor Lef tsires on " Explosi'^n-: in Cral Mines " (1878), .Tournal o' 

 the Society of Arts, vol xxvi , p. 458. OaUoway, " History of Coal-mining." 

 '^ Will.s. Can'or Lecture, .1 iii-na'. vol. xxvi., p. 474. 

 •' Galloway, " Historv of Cna'-mininp." 

 < Hartshorne, " Old English Glasses " (1897). 



