278 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 166S. 



And these are the preparations they make use of, before it is fit for fusion. For 

 this purpose they have a hearth about five feet high, set upon timber to be 

 turned as a windmill, to avoid the inconvenience of smoke upon a shifting 

 wind. The hearth contains half a bushel of ore and coal, with bellows on the 

 top. The charcoal is put upon the hearth, where the ore is; laying dry sticks 

 upon the top, which they call their white coals. There is a sink on the side of 

 the hearth, into which the lead runs, that holds about a hundred and a half. 

 Then it is cast into sand, forming what are called sowes. They have a bar to 

 stir the fire, a shovel to throw it up, and a ladle, heated red-hot, to cast out the 

 melted metal. Once melting is enough : and the best, which is heaviest, melts 

 first. 



There is a flight in the smoke, which falling upon the grass, poisons the cat- 

 tle that eat of it. They find the taste of it upon their lips to be sweet, when 

 the smoke chances to fly in their faces. This brought home and laid in their 

 houses, it kills rats and mice. If this flight mix with the water in which the 

 ore is washed, and be carried away in a stream, it poisons cattle that drink it, 

 even after a course of three miles. What of this flight falls upon the sand they 

 gather up to melt in a flag-hearth, and make shot and sheet-lead of it. 



Of Osteocolla, &c. near Franhfort on the Oder; also, an uncommon 

 hind of Snoiv. By J. Chr. Beckman. N" 39, p. 771. 



Osteocolla, or glue-bone, grows in a sandy yet not gravelly soil, and not at 

 all as yet known in any rich or clayey ground. It shoots down 10 or 12 feet 

 depth under ground ; where the branches most commonly grow straight up, yet 

 sometimes also spread sideways. The branches are of unequal thickness, like 

 plants growing above ground, some of them thicker, some slenderer ; and the 

 farther they are distant from the common stem, the smaller they are; the stalk 

 being thickest of all, usually equalling the thickness of an arm or a leg, and the 

 branches of the thickness of a little finger. Where the osteocolla is found the 

 sand is every wh e yellowish, and there appears a whitish fatty sand, which if 

 it be dug into has under it a dark fatty, and (how hot and dry soever the 

 other sand be) a somewhat moist and putrid matter, like rotten wood ; which 

 matter spreads itself here and there in the earth, just as the osteocolla itself 

 does, and is called the flower of the osteocolla. The osteocolla being thus 

 found, is quite soft, yet rather friable than ductile. So that to get out of the 

 ground a whole piece of it, with its branches, the sand must be very carefully 

 removed every way from it, and then let it lie so a while ; its quality being such 

 that remaining exposed to the sun for about half an hour or longer, it grows 



