A R T I C L E III. 



SMELTING PROCESSES AT FREIBERG. 



BY PEESIFOB FEAZEB, .111. 



Rend June 17th, 18T0. 



The present chart and text form part of a work intended to accompany an 

 application for examination in Metallurgy at Freiberg, Saxony. The text follows 

 the order of a preliminary course of lectures on the Freiberg Smelting Works, delivered 

 at the works themselves, every day during the month of August, by llerrn Flatten — Assis- 

 tant Marhold, and illustrated by personally examining the things spoken of. The plan 

 of the chart is entirely original, and its execution may be said to be a crude and imper- 

 fect attempt to portray what actually takes place at the Smelting Works; and, while ex- 

 hibiting the mutual relations of the different processes, so to separate them from each 

 other, that they and the constituents entering into every one of them may be traced to 

 their origins and applications. To do this it was necessary to condense the area of the 

 chart as much as possible in order to allow the whole to be seen at a glance, and on the 

 other hand some new symbolical method was requisite which should better conform in 

 system to the real sequence of operations. The former plan, adopted by Forenz and 

 others in the " trees," &c, seems to have several objections. In the first place, it takes 

 up a much larger space, and renders it more difficult to get a general view of the whole 

 cycle. Then, it permits only imperfectly the processes to be followed backwards (syn- 

 thetically or from educts and products to ores and reagents), because these < 'ducts and 

 products being separated and scattered over the whole text of the " tree," are not so readily 

 found, and when found must be traced back through six or seven disconnected descrip- 

 tions of different substances advancing in complexity of chemical composition. The 

 products of any particular process are, by this plan, necessarily strung out in horizontal 



AMEEI. P1I1LOSO. SOC. — VOL. XIV 102 



