165 



resisting the heat of the molten metal, but of insulating or hindering the 

 progress of the heat towards the staves of the tun, so long as the blow- 

 ing of the heated iron with cold air was continued. 



Our author took it for granted, that his reader was able to fill up and 

 complete his narrative, from his own knowledge of the iron manufac- 

 ture, as practised in Europe at the time he wrote, and not leave it in its 

 present imperfect state, which, to the ignorant and uninformed reader, 

 appears to be inconsistent with itself, and utterly impracticable. 



We are not told how hot the iron was before the blowing process 

 commenced; or how much hotter it might have become under that 

 process ; or how long, or how many minutes it was continued ; what 

 test the Japanese iron- master adopted to enable him to know when the 

 blowing process was completed, or when he might set the men to work 

 with the ladles to pour the liquid iron into the moulds, or cast it into 

 pigs or bars, or put it through some other process. 



Enough is, however, explained to enable us to compare roughly the 

 Japanese process with that proposed in 1856, by Mr. Bessemer, who then 

 astonished many persons, who had hitherto been considered conversant 

 with the management of liquid iron, by bringing forward a plan, as new, 

 for blowing molten iron with atmospheric air, which plan, in all essen- 

 tials, was so like the Japanese, that we may illustrate or explain the 

 one by the other ; and, perhaps, be led to infer that somehow the mo- 

 dern plan of blowing melted iron was really no more than a revival in 

 Europe, in 1856, of the old plan which Mandelslo savv^ in Japan in 

 1639. 



It is, however, possible, that Mr. Bessemer might have arrived at his 

 process by other means ; and this is the more likely, as the other process 

 of blowing heated iron we have hereafter to call attention to, had been 

 previously in use in England. In it we discover the application of the 

 same principle to practice, but in a minor degree, both as to the quantity 

 of iron operated on by the blast of cold air, and also in the inferiority of 

 the temperature which is obtained by the blowing process. 



It is very mnch to be regretted that Mandelslo' s account of the Japa - 

 nese method of blowing melted iron with cold air, and thereby heating it 

 by partially burning it and its alloys, is so very imperfect; but with the 

 aid of Mr. Bessemer' s published plans, we can perfectly understand it. 

 Mandelslo clearly gives the Japanese the ownership of the process he no- 

 tices ; and we can hardly think he would have done so, had he seen or 

 heard of it in the East Indies, Tartary, or Persia, or of any similar process. 



He, however, takes no notice of the comparative scarceness of iron in 

 Japan, remarked by all modern visitors to that country, and of the extreme 

 abundance of iron, and the great craft of smiths of all kinds in China, 

 facts which our traveller was ignorant of, or leaves us to gather from 

 other witnesses. He, however, tells us that the Japanese claim to have 

 had from the earliest times a great intercourse with China. It hence 

 follows that they might have obtained from China this curious process 

 of blowing hot iron with cold air, and partially burning it and its alloys, 

 and thereby improving its quality for general or special purposes ; 



E. I. A. PEOC. — VOL. VIII. Z 



