Manufacture of Bar Iron in Southern India. 399 



struck strongly with a hammer with a narrow pane, so as to 

 curve it in opposite directions, or while heated to redness, 

 they may be kneed backwards and forwards at the same 

 spot on the edge of the anvil. This is a severe trial which 

 the hoop (Swedish iron) bears surprizingly, emitting as it 

 is hammered, a phosphoric odour peculiar to it, and to the 

 bar iron of Ulverstone, which also resembles it in furnishing 

 a good steel. The forging of a horse-shoe is reckoned a 

 good criterion of the quality of iron. 



23. There is hardly one of the above tests, which good 

 native iron of Southern India will not bear, and some iron 

 which was produced in my own furnaces, has stood drawing 

 out under the hammer into a fine nail rod not ~th inch thick, 

 without splitting, and when kneed backwards and forwards, 

 only broke after six or seven times. When twisted like a 

 hank of whipcord until some of the plies began to draw out, 

 no fracture occurred in any part, and a half inch bar \ inch 

 in thickness bore doubling together cold, and the angle 

 hammered down close with very little signs of separation 

 between the fibres. As I have shewn that native Indian 

 iron contains steel, the quality can be easily tested by a ve- 

 ry simple method, which is merely to bring the middle part 

 of the bar to a red heat, and then immersing it in water, by 

 which all the steely portions will be rendered brittle, with- 

 out the fibrous portions being affected. An inch bar of 

 good iron thus treated will bear a dozen blows of a heavy 

 sledge hammer before it will break. 



24. The fractured end of a bar of Indian iron presents a 

 very different appearance to that of English, none of the 

 glistering portions being visible, but if not fibrous, it shews 

 the granular fracture of an aggregation of crystalline grains, 

 either large or small, according to the hardness of steel 

 which it contains. The iron thus examined may be sepa- 

 rated for different purposes into four different kinds. 



1st. Completely fibrous. Fit for nails, horse-shoes, bolts, 



