222 Review. of the Practical Tourist. 



workmen. The bars of iron are heaped up in his yards like piles 

 of cord wood. A branch of a canal has been formed through the 

 center of his premises, over which there is a bridge that is capa- 

 ble, as it was stated to me, of being raised, for canal boats to pass 

 beneath it, upon the principle of the hydrostatic paradox. The 

 pressure is conveyed through tubes filled with water, and laid beneath 

 the surface of the ground, to act on the movable pistons upon which 

 the bridge rest ; and when the forcing pump is put in motion, the 

 bridge rises from the abutments as if by magic." 



In Sheffield the author confined his attention chiefly to the manu- 

 facture of hard ware, in which, this place, with a population of sixty 

 five thousand persons, has become the rival of Birmingham. The 

 following extracts are less interesting for any new practical information, 

 than for the idea they give us of the scale of business carried on in 

 Sheffield. 



" It affords much gratification to a stranger to view the various pro- 

 cesses in the manufacture of cutlery, whereby in some cases, a bar 

 of rough iron, brought here from Sweden, is wrought, by the skilful 

 labor of the artists, into articles more valuable than a bar of silver of 

 the same weight. My first visit was to the extensive works for con- 

 verting iron into cast steel, belonging to the Messr. Naylor &£ Sand- 

 erson. Their brands are well known to the machinists of the Uni- 

 ted States, as indicating the best qualities of cast steel sent from Eng- 

 land. About seven thousand pounds have been made here in one 

 day. The coal used for the works is of a selected quality ; in some 

 of the lumps of which the charred particles of the fibres of wood 

 appeared distinctly visible, exactly resembling those perceptible in 

 common charcoal. 



" The first process in making the cast steel is to arrange bars 

 of Swedish iron in a long narrow brick box or oven, about two and 

 a half feet wide and three feet deep, and of a length sufficient to 

 receive the longest bars. Between each layer of iron bars, pow- 

 dered charcoal is sifted and the top of this box is covered with a 

 layer of clay nearly five inches thick, to exclude the air and prevent 

 the powdered charcoal from being consumed by the heat, which is 

 communicated to it through the lining of the brick work. This 

 brick box is enclosed in a regular furnace, in such a manner that the 

 intense heat of the flames may circulate around it and gradually heat 

 the bars of iron, covered up by the charcoal, to an intense glow, for 

 about the period of a week ; after which the whole is cooled. If the 



