166 



though no traveller, that I know of, to China, or any other part of 

 Asia, has distinctly noticed the process used in Japan, or any other like 

 it, as involving the chemical principles which give it peculiarity and 

 excellence. 



I believe there is nothing recorded by any old or modern tra- 

 veller to Japan, which will justify us in considering the Japanese, any 

 more than the Chinese, the Hindoos, or other Asiatics, an inventive 

 people. Latterly the Japanese have exhibited wonderful tact in pick- 

 ing up information in the arts and manufactures from the Europeans 

 they have come in contact with; so it is quite within the limits of pro- 

 bability, that they got their " particular invention," as our traveller 

 calls it, jfrom the Chinese, or the parties they got their iron from origi- 

 nally, as very little is said to be found native in Japan. 



If our argument be correct, the process may not be Japanese, but 

 Chinese ; and they may still use it in those districts where they reduce 

 the iron from the ore, or purify it for ulterior operations. Their very tough 

 iron clamps and wire may be made of blown iron. That the Chinese 

 possess many metallurgic processes altogether unknown in Europe is 

 beyond a doubt; and this one of blowing hot iron, and making it hotter 

 with a cold blast of common air, may be one of them. But then it is 

 not likely that the Chinese themselves invented the process, which ap- 

 pears to point to a method for reducing iron on a very small scale from 

 the ore in an earthen crucible; which, we can imagine, was removed from 

 the fire, and its contents, less the molten button at the bottom of it, 

 blown aside or away, by the agency of a powerful circular bellows, used 

 previously for urging the fire in which the earthen crucible was heated, 

 and the iron reduced or melted. 



Now this process, on a small scale, might lead at once to the blow- 

 ing of hot iron on a large one, if it were found that the quality of the 

 iron was much improved by it ; or that the contents of one crucible 

 might be kept hot, or made hotter by it, while the iron contents of other 

 crucibles might be emptied into it, and all thoroughly blended into one 

 mass, without the aid of another fire, or the labour and danger of lifting 

 a full or heavy crucible from one place to another. 



In practice the lining of the wooden tun with six inches of earth 

 was like a great modern pot of clay, used for melting black bottle-glass, 

 being neither more nor less than a gigantic crucible,"^' so constructed and 

 dried that it would bear the heat without cracking, and for a sufficient 

 timet confine it, till the blowing process was completed. 



* Though Mandelslo states nothing of the means adopted for preparing the earthen 

 lining of the " tun," it is probable that it was not only air-dried, but that fire was used 

 to dry it, and possibly to heat it, before the iron was cast into it. 



t As we are not informed how the blast of cold air was applied, we cannot form a 

 comparison of Mr. Bessemer's process, or give a reasonable guess as to the time the liquid 

 iron was operated on. It seems as if the blast in the Japanese process was directed 

 strongly downwards, and slightly divergent from the centre, so as to produce motion in 

 the mass, and blow the scales )r scoriae produced to the side of the vessel. 



