ON PUDDLING IRON. 63 
mical reasoning here adopted, I am not prepared to say ; but that much can 
be accomplished by the means actually at our doors is proved by the result 
of the working of a puddling-furnace erected eighteen months since to my 
designs by the Bolton Steel and Iron Company in Lancashire. 
This furnace consists of a puddling-chamber of very nearly the ordinary 
form, which is heated, however, by means of a regenerative gas furnace, a 
system of which the principle is now sufficiently well established to render a 
very detailed description here unnecessary. The general arrangement of the 
furnace is shown in the accompanying illustrations. It consists of two 
essential parts :— 
The Gas-producer, in which the coal or other fuel is converted into a com- 
bustible gas; and 
The Furnace, with its “‘regenerators” or chambers for storing the waste 
heat of the flame, and giving it up to the incoming air or gas. 
Fig. 1.—Section of Gas-producer. Scale 4, inch to a foot. 
The Gas-producer is shown in fig. 1; it is a rectangular firebrick chamber, 
one side of which, 8, is inclined at an angle of from 45° to 60°, and is pro- 
vided with a grate, c, at its foot. The fuel, which may be of any descrip- 
tion, such as coal, coke, lignite, peat, or even sawdust, is filled in through a 
hopper, , at the top of the incline, and falls in a thick bed upon the grate. 
Air is admitted at the grate, and, in burning, its oxygen unites with the 
carbon of the fuel, forming carbonic-acid gas, which rises slowly through 
