212 
NATURE 

[Fan. 12, 1871 


discs upon the face of low clouds, and visible through the 
whole of their intermediate course. 
When the flow of spiegeleisen has ceased, the trough is 
moved aside and a large counterpoised arm bearing the 
“ladle” is swung round upon an hydraulic piston, which 
forms at the same time its axis and lifter. The ladle, a 
large lined iron pot, is adjusted under the mouth of the 
converter, which is now tilted a little more, till the melted 
metal is poured out in a thick brilliant white-hot stream 
accompanied from time to time with great slabs of cinder 
of a darker colour which float upon its surface as it pours, 
and form a thick scum covering the contents of the ladle. 
When all the fluid metal is poured into the ladle, the con- 
verter is tilted over till completely inverted, and the re- 
maining viscous mass of cinder drops out ina glowing 
heap upon the floor. 
During these proceedings a set of workmen have been 
preparing the moulds in which the ingots of steel are to 
be cast. These moulds are of cast-iron, nearly cylindrical, 
being larger at bottom than top, and open at both ends. 
They have lugs or handles at top by which they are lifted. 
They stand upon a tile, and are well packed round the 
bottom with sand to prevent the outflow of the melted 
steel. While the blow was proceeding these were arranged 
in an arc of acircle whose radius exactly corresponds with 
the length of the arm bearing the ladle. 
The ladle is now swung round and adjusted till it stands 
directly over the first of this row of iron vases, and a plug 
is released by which a hole in the bottom of the ladle is 
cpened. Through this the steel is poured into the ingot. 
When the first is filled the plug is closed, the ladle swung 
round to the second mould, and so on, till all the steel 
is thus cast into ingots, the size of which’ varies with 
the kind of work for which the steel is required. A thin 
steel plate is placed on the top of each casting imme- 
diately the mould is filled, and over this a bed of sand is 
placed, and speedily and firmly pressed down. 
As soon as the ingots have solidified, and while they 
are still glowing, the moulds are lifted off them by means 
of an hydraulic crane, and afterwards the ingots are picked 
up by tongs attached to the same machinery, and are 
carted away, all red hot, to the hammer-shops, where they 
are thumped and rolled or otherwise tortured into their 
required forms of rails, tyres, plates, &c. 
‘The above are the leading phenomena of the Bessemer 
precess ; the chemical actions producing them, and the 
changes wrought in the pig-iron and spiegelcisen, will be 
treated in another part of this paper. 
W. MATTIEU WILLIAMS 



NOTES 
Ow1NcG to Mr, Lockyer having been summoned to Malta to 
give evidence at the court-martial on the commander of the 
unfortunate Psyche (which we regret to hear has not been 
saved), we are unable to give a detailed report of the pro- 
ce-dings of the Sicilian Eclipse Expedition. We understand 
that Mr. Brothers, who was stationed at Syracuse, obtained 
five photographs of the Eclipse during totality. One of these 
shows the corona ‘‘as it was never seen on glass before.” At 
Augusta very little was seen ; but at Syracuse, the southernmost 
station of all, the clouds which concealed the earlier stages of 
the Eclipse, passed away from the sun about five minutes before 
totality, ‘‘ disclosing,” writes Mr. Brothers, ‘‘a scene I shall 
never forget.” Next week we shall hope to be able to givea 
complete account of the results of the Expedition, and their 
bearings on any increase of our knowledge of Solar Physics. 
PROFESSOR CARL Gustav BiscHor, who died at Bonn on 
the 29th of November last, was equally distinguished as a 
chemist and a geologist. He was born in 1792, near Niiremberg, | December has been 1:07” below zero C. ora little above 30° F. 


in Bavaria, and was consequently at the time of his death in his 
seventy-ninth year. In 1810 he entered the University of 
Erlangen, where the lectures of Prof. Hildebrandt induced him 
to devote his study to chemistry and physics. In 1816 he 
succeeded to his master’s position, and brought to a conclusion 
his ‘* Lehrbuch der Chemie.”” In 1822 he removed to Bonn, in 
which University he occupied the position of Professor of 
Chemistry from that time till his death. Shortly afterwards, how- 
ever, he began to pay more attention to subjects connected 
with chemical and physical geology, publishing a large number 
of treatises of sterling merit, an enumeration of which is 
given in the Geological Magazine for January. In 1841 his 
“*Physical, Chemical, and Geological Researches on the Inter- 
nal Heat of the Globe,” were published in London, and in 1854 
an enlarged translation of his “ Lehrbuch der chemischen und 
physikalischen Geologie,” was issued by the Cavendish Society. 
He was a Foreign Member of the Geological Society of London, 
and had received from that body the gold Wollaston medal. 
THE following courses on Anatomy and Physiology at Cam- 
bridge are announced for this term :—Zoology and Comparative 
Anatomy, three days a week, by Prof. Newton; Anatomy and 
Physiology, three days a week, by Prof. Humphry ; Practical 
Anatomy, three days a week, by Prof. Humphry and Mr. 
Carver ; Practical Histology, by Mr. Martin, under the superin- 
tendence of Prof. Humphry, once a week, with a Microscopical 
Demonstration once a fortnight ; Physiology, three days a week, 
by Dr. Michael Foster, with Practical Instruction in the Physio- 
logical Laboratory daily. 
PROFEssOR P. M. DUNCAN will shortly commence a course 
of Lectures at King’s College, London, which is open to the 
public, and to those who are going in for examinations. It will 
comprise ten lectures on the Principles of Biology in its relation 
to the Succession of Life on the Globe, five on Astronomical 
Geology, and the rest on the Principles of Geology. The course 
will open on Saturday, Jan. 28, at 11.30 A.M., and will be con- 
tinued through the Lent, Easter, and Michaelmas terms. 
Dr. E. Symes THoMPsoNn will deliver two lectures at the ~ 
Gresham College, Basinghall Street, ‘On the Circulation of the 
Blood,” on Saturday the 14th and Monday the 16th of January, 
at seven o'clock, which will be free to the public. It is proposed 
next term to continue the course ‘‘On the Organs of Respira- 
tion and Circulation in Health and Disease.” 
IN answer to several inquiries, we may state that the penny 
lectures delivered at the Hulme Town Hall by Prof. Huxley and 
others, to which we referred last week, are published by Messrs. 
Heywood, of Manchester. 
WE stated in our last number the lowest temperature recorded 
at Blackheath during the recent frost to have been 15°3° F. 
on the night of December 24. More recent tables published 
in the Gardener's Chronicle give the minimum as 9°8° on the 
25th. From December 22nd to January 4th the temperature at 
Blackheath ranged between 6'9° below the mean of fifty years, 
on January 4th to 18°7° below the average on December 25th. 
The minimum above mentioned occurred at 7 A.M. on Christmas 
Day, being lower than any temperature since the morning of 
Christmas Day 1860, when it was 8°. In the midland and eastern 
counties, where the cold was most severe, it is feared that much 
injury has been done to vegetation, especially to the evergreens. 
In Paris the frost has been equally intense. In a paper recently 
read before the French Academy of Sciences, it was stated that 
during December the temperature only rose above the freezing 
point on nine days. In the fifty years from 1816 to 1866 the average 
temperature for the month of December has been 354° above 
zero C, or about 38° F. The average temperature of this last 






