292 Miscellaneous Intelligence. 



centra! portion of the shed contains the furnace, while the ends are 

 the receptacles for the fuel, ore, and various requisites in the process. 

 The furnace is ten feet long, four feet high, and four feet wide ; the 

 fireplace occupies the middle portion, descending three feet into the 

 body of the furnace, and beneath is a basin-shaped receptacle, for the 



refined metal. 



The bellows is a large wooden tube, formed out of a single tree, and 

 a piston being worked backward and forward keeps up a continuous 

 stream of air. The sand moulds are placed near the furnace, and 

 when sufficient metal has run, the moulds are filled, sixteen ingots 

 being cast at one time, and generally 44 to 45 in a night's work — the 

 work being carried on at that period of the twenty-four hours, in con- 

 sequence of the extreme heat of the day. The smelting of the ore, 

 and the preparation of the coals, each requires habit and experience, 

 and are performed by persons who make a regular profession of the 

 business; the smelters are paid by the night, and the coal burners by 



the basket of coals employed. The facility, however, with which the 

 ore is collected, and the simplicity of the methods of mining, require, as 

 compared with other mining countries, little assistance from machinery ; 

 besides, the implements in general use are neither numerous nor diffi- 

 cult to use, and hence few artificers are required at the mines. 



6. Navigation of the Arctic Regions, (United Service Gazette; 

 Athen., No. 1122.) — Commander Joseph West, an officer of long 

 standing, has proposed a plan of fitting a steam-vessel with ice hammer 

 and ice saws, to be worked by a shaft of the engine, for the purpose of 

 navigating the polar regiop.s. The projection is applicable to either 

 screw or paddle-wheel steamers, and is thus explained : — A semicir- 

 cular cogged plate is fixed on the shaft, which connects itself with an 

 elevating bar, fixed to the end of a sway beam, the fulcrum being in a 

 crank on the bow of the vessel, at the fore end of the sway beam, 

 where the ice hammer is hung, which by the connection of the cogs, 

 is raised eiijht feet at every revolution. It is thrown out of gear when 

 they disconnect, the hammer then falls, and is again raised when the 

 cogs connect. The hammers are from fifteen to twenty hundred weight, 

 working alternately on each side before the stem, and are capable of 

 breaking through ice four or five feet thick ; thus enabling a vessel so 

 fitted to approximate much nearer to the supposed position of Sir John 

 Franklin's ships than can be done by the present means, — as the above 

 application can be fitted to any steam vessel at a trifling expense com- 

 pared with the object to be obtained. The invention is simple as it 

 appears to us to be practicable ; and we trust that the Admiralty will 

 appreciate the value of the plan, and the motives which actuated the 

 gallant projector, by despatching a vessel so fitted at once on the peril- 

 ous track of the almost despaired-of northern navigators. 



7. Type Manufacture, (Athen., No. 1127.)— the Earl of Rosse 

 gave his third Soiree as President of the Royal Society on Saturday 

 last. There were several models and inventions exhibited : — the most 

 remarkable amongst the latter being a machine for manufacturing print- 

 ing types without fusing the metal and pouring it into moulds. The 

 inventor, M. Petit, effects his process by the use of steel dies and 

 matrices which by means of powerful pressure impress the letters, &c 

 on copper fashioned into quadrangular strips of indefinite length wound 



