14 PRELIMINARY NOTICE ON THE 



In Cuttack this is not the case, and the natives employ nothing but 



Made of sM timber. 8al (Skorea Tobusta) for their charcoal 



Eude and wasteful as are the processes adopted in other parts of the 



country, the wild inhabitants of the Tributary Mehals appear to excel 



all others that I have heard of, in the ingenuity with which they seem 



to have adopted a process for obtaining the very smallest possible amount 



of useful fuel from the greatest amount of timber. 



" Only logs of one size are employed, namely, 

 Mode of preparation, 



" about 12 to 18 inches in diameter. 



"•Trees of large dimensions cannot be broken up by the tools the na- 

 " tives possess, and the trunks are left to rot in the forest. The smaller 

 " branches are perhaps used for fire-wood ; they are never, so far as I am 

 " aware, used for making charcoal. The logs used are cut into pieces 

 " about 5 or 6 feet long, which are piled on each other in layers crosswise, 

 "and then the small stack of logs, without any other preparation, 

 " is set fire to. When well lighted, water is thrown on, and the crusts 

 " of charcoal formed are knocked off each log." (Mr. Blanford's MS.) 



The smelting process so closely resembles that prevailing in other 



parts of India, that no great space need be devoted 

 Smelting process simi- 

 lar to that in use else- to a detailed description of it here. Mr. Samuells, 

 where. 



then Commissioner of Cuttack, gave a brief 



account of this process, as practised in Cuttack, in the Journal of the 



Asiatic Society of Bengal, No. VII., 1855, pp. 249-250. 



Charcoal and ore only are used ; the former in large quantities. No 



flux whatever is employed. The iron is seldom 



even thoroughly fused, and the mass of crude 



metal, as taken from the small furnaces, is mixed up with fragments of 



Xinbumt charcoal, pieces of slag and semi-fused metal. 



The furnaces are, generally speaking, about 3 feet 6 inches high, of 



circular form, and about 1 foot inside diameter. 

 Size, &o. of furnaces. , , . . . . . ,t_ 



In some places it is customary to increase the 



diameter towards the base ; in others it is the same throughout. 



