254 



ON THE MINES AND MINERAL 



sent it is little more than £10. The mountain iron could be afforded at 

 a much cheaper rate. 



The chief points, in which improvement is desirable, will be evident 

 from what I have stated (Art. 30). The erection of proper blast furnaces ; 

 the judicious employment of fllixes; and a more careful system of manu- 

 facture ; are all that is required to raise the quality of the metal, according 

 to the ore used, either to a standard with the English iron or the Swedish. 

 In the erection of blast furnaces, there seems no difficulty in a country 

 where water is to be commanded at every turn. Limestone, one of the 

 fluxes most used, is at hand ; and all that seems required is a careful 

 superintendence, to shew the advantage of the new methods in the first 

 instance. 



These being once established, it appears probable they would be ge- 

 nerally adopted, when the object is to furnish so generally useful a 

 metal in a purer and more workable state. I have said nothing of the 

 process required for bringing the fused metal into a malleable condition, 

 as it offers no difficulty. Water may here also be advantageously used as 

 the moving power for the great sledge hammers, with which the fused 

 metal is to be beaten. 



The iron ores all belong, with the exception of those of two mines, to 

 the species called red oxide (fer oligiste of Hauy). This is aperoxyde of 

 iron; containing, in its best-defined type, seventy per cent, iron, and thirty, 

 oxygen. The working ore, however, often contains earthy impurities, 

 which reduce the proportion as low as fifty per cent, of metal. — Red hema- 

 tite, a variety of this species occurs in a very extensive bed in Gneiss at 

 Dhaniakot, on the Cosillah. It frequently contains small veins of mica- 

 ceous IRON ore of a highly splendent lustre. At Ramgdr, on the road 



from 



