572 Di". Schafhaeutl on the Different Species of 



tion of the blast furnaces under some circumstances, which 

 I shall further explain ; so that I witnessed for months a dif- 

 ferent working of the blast furnaces, even at different periods 

 of the day. 



Notwithstanding the profusion of rich ores throughout 

 France, it is infinitely more difficult to produce iron of good 

 quality from them, than from the clay ironstone in England ; 

 and excepting where iron is melted down with charcoal, the 

 iron produced is of very inferior quality compared with that 

 of England. 



As 1 think it will be very instructive to examine the chemi- 

 cal properties of several specimens of such cast iron, obtained 

 from the same ore and in the same furnace, I shall briefly 

 describe five specimens of iron from the furnace of Alais. 



I call the first {a) ; it has a dead gray appearance, but is in- 

 tersected by somewhat whitish shining rays having a distant re- 

 semblance to the lamellar crystallization of white crystallized 

 charcoal iron. It was rather hard and brittle, and its specific 

 gravity was 7"44-2. The second specimen {b) was obtained 

 under peculiar circumstances. During one cast, in particular, 

 the iron ran from the hearth into the moulds in the sand, and 

 the rapid contraction of the exterior of those pigs forced out 

 the still liquid interior through the face of the pigs like a 

 fountain. The iron thus forced out is the specimen (b) ; it 

 had a silvery white appearance, broke with large crystalline 

 planes, approaching somewhat to a cubical fracture, and had 

 a specific gravity of 7*33. 



The specimen [c) was also perfectly silver-white, consisting 

 of an extremely large pearl-like granulation, easily to be 

 broken, and its specific gravity was 7"5S2. 



Specimen {d) was extremely difficult of fusion, scarcely to be 

 melted down in the fineries, and not at all available in the 

 puddling furnaces ; its specific gravity was 7'61. 



Specimen [e) is a malleable iron produced from gray cast 

 iron, obtained onlv from a few casts durinfr the beginning of the 

 working of the blast furnace. Its qualities we shall afterwards 

 describe. 



On treating the specimen (a) with hydrochloric acid in the 

 way before described, I observed, that during the last wash- 

 ing of the sulphuret of lead v/ith boiling-hot distilled wa- 

 ter, acidulated with hydrochloric acid, as soon as this water 

 dropt beneath into the solution of nitrate of lead, the surface 

 of the liquid assumed a beautiful bright vermilion-red colour 

 during the formation of chloride of lead. As soon as a consi- 

 derable quantity of the coloured fluid was collected, I decanted 

 it into another glass and found next day that the colourhig 



