156 JOURNAL OF SCIENCE, 
remarks, however, that he could scarcely, under the circum- 
stances, describe himself as bringing forward anything absolutely 
new, or indeed any immediately practicable proposal to be 
directly carried out ; and therefore he merely states, and in part 
endeavours to answer, the two following questions :— 
ist. Is the production of pig iron with brown coal (lignite), 
from a theoretic point of view, possible or not ? 
2nd. Is the production of pig iron with brown coal practically 
workable or not ? 
To the first of these questions the answer returned was that 
the application of raw as well as of coked brown coal to blast 
furnace working was by no means impossible, and> there 
remained therefore nothing more to be added on that point. 
As regards the second question, it was perfectly evident that 
the difficulty of working the blast furnace with brown coal, so 
far as the selection of coal to be used was concerned, was to be 
found in the largeness of the grain and the consequent density 
of the burden of the smelting column ; and in considering this 
difficulty the Professor thought his attention should be confined 
to ascertaining what method appeared most likely to supply a 
great part of the production of pig iron with brown coal used 
as fuel, or the coke extracted from the brown coal. The Pro- 
fessor accordingly confined himself to the application of brown 
coal to the production of pig iron; that is, to the composition 
of a mixed charge (one-fourth to three-fourths brown coal, with 
three-fourths to one-fourth coke), whereby notable results have 
been already obtained in Austro-Hungary, and he remarked 
very truly that a still higher degree of success should have been 
obtained if the price of brown ‘coal there were not so high as to 
be a drawback. 
To the record of the proceedings, proposals, and experi- 
ments hitherto made in Austro-Hungary relative to the applica- 
tion of brown coal to the production of pig iron, and the results 
thereby obtained, as published by Herr Kupelwieser, I desire to 
add the following facts :— 
With the exception of Kalan, nowhere hitherto has the blast 
furnace been worked with brown coal exclusively ; and even in 
Kalan, under the management of a gentleman well known in 
metallurgical circles (Herr Massenez, the general manager at 
Horde), it answered only for a short time, and not without all 
sorts of interruptions in the working. Moreover, in every in- 
stance these experiments had hitherto been made in the old 
standing blast furnaces, which were constructed for working 
with charcoal or coke, and without any regard to the special 
qualities of the brown coal so used. With the mixed charge, 
also, very good results have sometimes been obtained when — 
using the old blast furnaces; and some of the results might 
have been still better, if only a stronger blast had been at com- 
mand, such as would be necessary to succeed in the working of 
a furnace charged with anthracite, for the anthracite likewise 
has, more or less, the undesirable property of bursting in pieces — 
