186 REPORT — 1860. 



years ; the other at Low Moor, belonging to Messrs. Wickhara and Hard)', pro- 

 longed its unintermitting blast for fifteen years. The materials for the experi- 

 ments, in addition to those which I was myself able to supply, were provided 

 partly by a grant from the Association, partly by an extensive donation of 

 minerals and fossils from the stores of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society. 

 Professor Phillips also, who was then in charge of that Society's Museum, lent 

 me his valuable assistance. 



The object kept in view, in devising experiments of so long a duration, was 

 to subject the greatest possible variety of materials to the greatest possible 

 variety of conditions, such as it might be presumed had formed, or altered, 

 rocks, minerals, and mineralized organic remains. 



These were arranged in numerous crucibles, upright and inverted, and 

 within two strong tripartite boxes of deal bound with iron thongs ; one 

 of these was stored with large blocks and copious powders of granite, basalt, 

 limestone, grit, and shale, with whole and pounded minerals of every kind, 

 hydrates and anhydrates, the ingredients of a great variety of minerals com- 

 pounded in proper proportions, all the different salts and elements calculated 

 to react upon them, with almost every metal adapted to form veins or to re- 

 gister heat ; the other contained organic substances, fossil and recent plants, 

 shells, corals, reptiles, and bones, disposed in clay, sand, chalk, marble, gypsum, 

 fluor, sulphates, muriates and other salts of soda and potash which might dis- 

 engage volatile elements by their mutual action, to react on fixed constituents. 



At the Elsicar furnace I was allowed, whilst it was being built, to insert 

 crucibles in the back of the masonry in immediate contiguity with the body 

 of melted iron. At Low Moor it was agreed to place boxes filled with cruci- 

 bles and materials under the bottom stone, before the furnace was built. 

 This stone, consisting of millstone grit, 15 inches thick, though it gradually 

 wears hollow in the centre, retains the iron fused upon it usually for fourteen 

 or fifteen years, without being materially impaired. In its crevices are often 

 found the beautiful cubic crystals of nitrocyanide of titanium, first brought 

 into notice by Dr. Buckland. 



In this situation the temperature to which the contents of the boxes would 

 be exposed could not be exactly foreseen. It was presumed that in the centre 

 it would be near to the melting-point of cast iron. It will be seen by refer- 

 ence to Plates IV. and V., which give a section and plan of the furnace, that 

 the boxes did not occupy the whole space beneath the bottom stone. It oc- 

 curred to me therefore, when these had been placed in position on a bed of 

 sand, covered with the same material, and built up with fire brick, to deposit 

 round them in a similar bed of sand, and enclose in like manner within walls 

 of brick, lumps of various metals, and of granite, sandstone, fossiliferous 

 shale, and limestone. From these supplementary experiments are derived 

 the most interesting of the results which I have to describe. 



For when at the expiration of fifteen years the furnace was blown out, I 

 found nothing left of the boxes but the iron straps with which they were 

 bound, in a state of oxidation ; a few crucibles and portions of crucibles only 

 had survived the general wreck of their contents ; granites, basalts, limestone, 

 choice minerals, measured pieces, weighed powders and compositions, had 

 disappeared ; all the exactness with which Professor Phillips had arranged for 

 identifying the altered substances by their position and by comparison with 

 reserved specimens, was lost labour. 



Nor did I find the deposits in the Elsicar furnace, at the end of five years, 

 to have fared any better. From all these carefully devised experiments I can 

 produce but two worthy of notice. One of them exhibits the conversion of 

 river sand into sandstone, with a vacuity in its axis left by the volatilization 

 of a recent plant. The stone has considerable tenacity, and came out of the 



