Bibliography. 381 



sait voir a quelles substances le fer devait sa propriete de devenir 

 cassant," etc. etc. 



" Get ouvrage devait faire la matiere de trente lettres in folio, dont 

 Roger fit imprimer les deux premieres afin de se procurer des sous- 

 cripteurs. A I'annonce de cette publication et a la lecture de i'intro- 

 duction dans laquelle le plan en etait savamixient developpe, la terreur 

 s'erapara des maitres de forges Anglais : ils ' craignirent que le savant 

 chimiste ne portat la lumiere dans une carriere ou ils avaient soin 

 d'entretenir I'obscurite ; ils resolurent d'etouffer ce beau genie et ac- 

 coururent en foule dans le Monmouthshire pour racheter au prix de 

 I'or un monopole qui allait leur echapper. Roger eut la faiblesse de 

 ceder aux ofFres de ces avides Bretons et ses elucubrations resterent 

 enfouies dans les cabinets de trente personnes interessees a les cacher 

 de tous les yeux." — Landriu, torn. I, pp. 11 and 12. 



With less of the somewhat theatrical pomp under which M. Landriu 

 saw fit to introduce his notice, another, grounded upon the careful pe- 

 rusal of the said thirty letters and personal enquiries among those under 

 and with whom Rogers had worked, was made by Mr. Alexander, in 

 his Report on the Manufacture of Iron, noticed in Vol. xli. No, 2, of 

 this Journal. 



Under these concurring testimonies there is reasonable ground for 

 believing that the book will be found to contain matter of importance 

 for all who are interested in the subject. 



Mr. Alexander stands in no other light with regard to the publication 

 than that of friendly editor, as we are informed ; adding nothing of his 

 own except a review of the experiments on the expansibility and point 

 of fusion, of this fnetal, and the results of his own experiments on the 

 fusibility of different earthy and metallic silicates which are found in 

 or may advantageously enter into the composition of the furnace cinder 

 or slag. 



The design of Mr. Alexander in taking the trouble of this publication 

 was, as well to aid the family of Rogers — some of whom are understood 

 to be struggling in obscure poverty somewhere in Wales — as in fur- 

 therance of a corpus of treatises on the subject, which he proposed to 

 publish in the interest of this most important branch of American man- 

 ufactures, under the general title of " Contributions to the History of 

 the Manufacture of Iron ;" to which his Report, &c. before mentioned, 

 was meant to serve for introduction. 



In the introduction to that report he mentions Rogers and his work 

 in the following terms : 



" In 1819, Samuel Rogers, a working hand about one of the estab- 

 lishments in Monmouthshire, but in many regards an extraordinary 

 person, had yet, by some means, acquired a very judicious comprehen- 



