VOL. LIII.] [ PHILOSOPHICAL TllANSACTlONS. SQI 



riment; and first he spread it, without any addition to it, upon an iron plate over 

 a strong fire, where he gave it a very powerful roasting, to try if by that means 

 he could not relax, and loosen the component parts to such a degree, as to make 

 the separation and reduction of the metal more easy, when he should bring it 

 into the furnace. When he had so done, he mixed it up with a flux of a very 

 peculiar but gentle nature, which he had before made use of for other purposes 

 with great success, and committed it, as in the former experiment, to the fur- 

 nace, where he urged it by a very strong fire for about 3 hours, and on taking 

 it out, he found the event answerable to his most sanguine expectations; for in 

 the bottom of the crucible he found, as near as he could remember, rather more 

 than half of the sand he had put into the crucible reduced to a very fine malle- 

 able metal. 



Being fully convinced, by the experiment, that this black sand was a very rich 

 iron ore, he acquainted some of his friends with it, who being largely engaged 

 in trade to those parts of the American colonies, where he was informed this sand 

 was to be easily procured, and in very large quantities, he was in great hopes an 

 account of this nature would have inclined some of the gentlemen in that part of 

 the world, to have prosecuted so useful a discovery in a larger way ; and he owns 

 he had often wondered that an affair of such consequence should have lain dor- 

 mant for so many years. 



However he was a few months preceding the above date, pleasingly surprised 

 to find in the hands of Mr. Collinson, not only a pamphlet, but a letter on the 

 subject addressed to the Society for the Encouragement of Arts and Manufactures, 

 by Mr. G. Elliott, who relates that, though previous to his attempt of making iron 

 from this sand, he met with nothing but what was discouraging from the most 

 skilful persons to whom he proposed his design, yet that he had such a persua- 

 sion in his own mind of the practicability of the thing, that he could not rest 

 till he had made a trial, and the event proved encouraging much beyond his ex- 

 pectations, insomuch that he could scarcely believe the trial had been fairly made, 

 till a 2d trial evinced with certainty, that 83 lb. of the sand would produce a bar 

 of excellent iron weighing 50 lb. : a prodigious yield indeed, and far beyond what 

 Mr. H. had ever heard of from the richest iron ores that are any where to be 

 found; most of the ores he had ever met with or heard of, yielded little more 

 than half in pig metal, and which suffered a waste of near -l part to make toler- 

 able good bar iron, and much more if he was rightly informed, when the iron 

 was intended for more valuable purposes, such as being drawn into wire, &c. 



On this subject Mr. Home received the following letter from Mr. Elliot; 

 dated Killingworth, Oct. 4th, 1762. 



' I understand by Mr. Collinson, that you have seen, and greatly approve of, 



4 T -2 



