396 Manufacture of Bar Iron in Southern India. 



cut open while hot with a hatchet, to shew the quality. 

 Four men are required to work one of these furnaces, one 

 being a maistry superintendent, and the other three la- 

 bourers, and they are able to make about three lumps in 

 in a day of twelve hours, but after four days' work, the 

 lining of the furnace is destroyed, and requires renewal. 



19. The lumps which result from the native furnaces 

 weigh about eleven pounds, and are sold sometimes at the 

 rate of two annas each. They are not^ however, all iron, and 

 on bringing them to a welding heat in a forge, a large portion 

 consisting of fused oxide, melts away, and the best lumps 

 which I have examined yield only about six pounds of iron, 

 (generally they do not contain more than three pounds.) 

 Taking forty rupees a ton as the expence of forging the iron 

 into rough bars by hand hammers, we shall have eighty 

 rupees a ton as the expence of bar iron, made with these 

 diminutive furnaces, which is less than the present market 

 price at Madras of the cheapest English bar iron. In my 

 experimental investigation of the best methods of managing 

 small blast furnaces, not larger than the native ones, I have 

 found that two men can procure in a day's work of twelve 

 hours forty pounds of crude iron, with an expenditure of 

 half the quantity of charcoal and ore used by the natives. 

 Furnaces of this size offer therefore a cheap, convenient, 

 and ready mode of smelting iron wherever charcoal is 

 abundant. 



20. Although the aggregate manufacture of iron in India 

 is no doubt very considerable, yet from the difficulty of 

 inland transport in Southern India, it is probable that no 

 extensive iron works will ever be established by European 

 capitalists ; and the only improvements which are capable of 

 being introduced with advantage, or may be within the 

 comprehension of natives, are those by which the expendi- 

 ture of fuel may be economised by increasing the size of the 

 furnace, and by which a sufficiently powerful blast may be 



