174 HORSE-SHOES AND HORSE-SHOEING. 



and crucibles disinterred by us are peculiar in form, and 

 appear to testify that the use of the blast to hasten the 

 combustion of the fuel was then unknown.)' 



It may here be remarked that Mr T. Wright shows 

 that the Romans in Britain smelted their iron very 

 imperfectly. ' It is supposed that layers of iron ore, 

 broken up, and charcoal mixed with limestone as a 

 flux, were piled together, and enclosed in a wall and 

 covering of clay, with holes at the bottom for letting 

 in the draught, and allowing the melted metal to run out. 

 For this purpose they were usually placed on sloping- 

 ground. Rude bellows were, perhaps, used, worked 

 by different contrivances.' Air Bruce, in his account of 

 the ' Roman Wall,' has pointed out a very curious con- 

 trivance for producing a blast in the furnaces of the 

 extensive Roman iron-works in the neighbourhood of 

 Epiacum (Lanchester). A part of the valley, rendered 

 barren by the heaps of slightly-covered cinders, had never 

 been cultivated till very recent times. ' During the opera- 

 tion of bringing this common into cultivation,' Mr Bruce 

 says, ' the method adopted by the Romans of producing 

 the blast necessary to smelt the metal was made apparent. 

 Two tunnels had been formed in the side of a hill ; they 

 were wide at one extremity, but tapered off to a narrow 

 bore at the other, where they met in a point. The 

 mouths of the channels opened towards the west, from 

 which quarter a prevalent wind blows in this valley, and 

 sometimes with great violence. The blast received by 

 them would, when the wind was high, be poured with 

 considerable force and effect upon the smelting furnaces 

 at the extremity of the tunnels.' This primitive mode of 



