VOL. LIII.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 693 



the thing to a degree next to enthusiasm, so that I could not rest till I had made 

 trial. I am glad that the iron has such qualities as to meet with your approba- 

 tion; I knew that the iron was good, but did not know that it was so good as 

 your superior knowledge has found it. I want to know what such iron will sell 

 for in England, whether it will be worth while to send it. This black sand is a 

 treasure that has long lain hidden from the world, and is what may render the 

 colonies more valuable to Great Britain.' 



(P. S. The bars of iron which have hitherto been made of sand, are from 50 

 to 50 gross, hope in time to have them reach to 70 lb. weight each ; experience 

 must determine that matter; we can do better than at the time the essay was 

 written. We have been visited with a long and sore drought, have done nothing 

 for a long time for want of water.) 



The samples which accompanied this letter were 2 small bars, weighing only 

 a few ounces, one of the iron made from the sand, the other of steel made from 

 the same iron. These bars Mr. H. tried, and found that the bar of steel worked 

 extremely well under the hammer, was very pure and clean, and free from flaws. 

 On the contrary the bar of iron turned out much otherwise, for though it ap- 

 peared to bear the force of the hammer, as well as the steel, yet it was not near 

 so pure, but broke out in flaws and hollows, almost through the whole of the 

 bar, and which a welding heat would by no means bring into proper union ; this 

 however engaged Mr. H. to try a different method, which was, when the bar 

 was reduced into a proper size for the purpose, to double it up 3 times, one part 

 of the bar upon the other, and to try if it would then bear welding and become 

 more consistent, and by this means he found the end perfectly well answered; 

 for it bore the force of the fire and the hammer, and became in a manner per- 

 fectly sound. This severe trial proved to a demonstration, that the iron pos- 

 sessed all that agreeable toughness and ductility, for which the Spanish iron is so 

 deservedly famous, without partaking of that vile red-short quality, for which 

 the latter is very remarkable, and manifestly tends to prove the excellency of this 

 sand iron, when reduced into bar iron under proper care and circumspection. 

 This sand is so pure, and so clean washed, that their first method of reducing the 

 sand to bar iron proved too tedious, for want of some of those adventitious ma- 

 terials, to promote and perform the smelting, and which always accompanies the 

 common ore, whether it be of the rock or bog kind; which materials mixing 

 with the matter, made use of by way of flux, and uniting with the ashes of the 

 fuel employed in melting down the ore, is usually run into a thick opaque glassy 

 substance, forming as it were a covering over the metal, which by its gravity na- 

 turally sinks to the bottom ; this the workmen call cinder. Now the want of 

 this matter rendering the operation too tedious, Mr. H. finds they had recourse 

 either to this cinder brought from other iron works, or to a quantity of the bog- 



