October i, 1881.] THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
331 
from the spongy iron. This objection, however, is of 
little force in India, where labour is so cheap and 
where, as ah Lohara in the Central Provinces, 
we have entire hills composed of stone which 
contains 08 6 per cent of pure oxide of iron. 
The ohjection to the Indian charcoal iron on the 
score of cost would doubtless disappear, if, instead of 
the native process, the English method of employing 
large blast-furnaces producing cast-iron were intro- 
duced under proper conditions. The blast furnace 
method, though indirect and to some extent wasteful 
in the matter of fuel, has the great merit that by 
fusing the iron it effectually frees it from the earthy 
matters of the ore, and of the ash when coal is 
used us fuel. The spongy iron must be melted either 
in the furnace or in a cast-steel crucible, or else we 
must sacrifice more than half the iron to form a 
fusible slag as in the native process. 
There is no reason why iron equal to the best 
Swedish should not be made out of Indian ores 
with charcoal fuel, after the Swedish and Russian 
methods. The cast iron thus produced could he made 
! into the finest Bessemer steel, because the Indian 
ores are unusually free from the elements sulphur 
and phosphorus, which, when in large quantity, are 
j fatal to the Bessemer process as usually worked. 
J Pin-iron manufacture, by means of charcoal fuel, has 
I just been given up as a failure by the N. W. P. 
Government, which for some years carried on a 
smelting establishment at Dehchauri in Kumaun. 
' Several good reasons are, however, given in the 
J paper above-mentioned for this failure. In the first 
place the furnace was too large to be worked by 
natives alone ; and the pay of the European over- 
| seers was too great to be fairly debitable to one 
! furnace, when these men could equally well have 
looked after seveial. The chief reason, however, was 
that half the ore had to be carried 23 miles from 
! Ramgaih on men's heads or on the backs of mules. 
I In Europe the owner of such n furnace would either 
I have constructed a train way by which to bring the 
| ore from a distance, or he would have tried to 
work with the ore on the spot There is plenty of 
ore at Dehchauri close to the furnace, costing next 
j, to nothing to raise ; but it was considered too alu- 
minous to work by itself, and therefore the silicics 
Ramgarh ore was added to it. The writer of the 
report thinks it a pify that the Dehchauri works 
| were stopped so soon ; and certainly, before they 
were stopped, the experiment might have been made 
of using the oro found at the place, mixed with 
j limestone and sufficient sandstone to make the slag 
j| fuse readily. The ore contains 383 per cent of 
iron ; and if 20 per cent of siliceous material were 
! added to it, it would still have as large a percent- 
i ago of iron as the bulk of English clay ores. A 
I much smaller addition of sandstone would probably 
have bi en sufficient. 
The manufacture of iron aud eteel is likely soon 
I to be again revolutionized, as it was not long ago 
• by Bessemer; and the new systim will pn>b- 
1 ably prove fatal to 1 he production of charcoal 
I iron in this and other countries. In the Besse- 
|| mor process excellent cast-steel is .made from molteu 
D cast-iron in a few minutes; the iron being run into 
I a vessel lined with sdicrous materials, and there 
getting its impuriti'S carbon, silicon, and inangimse 
— bill nt away by a bla-t of air winch is f. reed through 
|i it. At the end of tho proce-s, enough pure cist h -n 
r is added to convert tho w ole mass into steel, which 
r is then poured into a ladle and east. Steel cun be 
I thus mane in enormous quantities, for each convert- 
I. ing Vessel will work off six or eight tons in fifteen 
B minutes. Two impurities, however, — sulphur and phos 
M phortlt, of which phosphorus is tho more deleterious, 
■ as it makes iron or steel brittlo when cold,— c inuot 
bo removed by Bcssemcr's process, siuco white hot 
iron reduce!) sulphuric and phosphoric oxides as soon 
as they are formed by the action of the blast. For 
making cast-steel by this rapid process, therefore, iron 
ores aB free from sulphur and phosphorus as possible 
soon came to be in great demand, w hile the inferior 
ores have been little used of late years Recently, 
Messrs. Thomas and Gilchrist have succeeded in per- 
fecting a process by which the phosphorus, and to a 
less extent the sulphur may be got rid of, tie 
matter how much the cast-iron may contain. The 
Bessemer "converter" is lined with magi esian lime-tone, 
and the mouth of the vessel above the molten metal 
is rilled with lime. When the phospboius is oxidized, 
the oxide at once combines with the lime forming a 
compound which is not reduced by iron. 
The Gilchrist-Thomas process has already come into 
extensive use on the Continent, where iron masters 
are less conservative than in England ; but before 
long we may expect to see excellent cast-steel made 
in England from the most inferior ore, and then it 
will be all over with the charcoal-iron industry, ex- 
cept in the most remote countries of the world. India 
may yet rank, however, as one of the great iron- 
producing countries if either Government or that pri- 
vate enterprise which is so favourably spoken of now 
a-days, would turn its attention seriously to the 
making of iron by means of Indian coal. There is far 
more wealth in the iron and coal deposits of the 
Central Provinces and Bengal than in all the gold fields 
of the Wynaad. 
TEA AND COFFEE CULTIVATION IN 
BENGAL. 
(From the Press Commissioner.) 
A report on *hc tea and coffee cultivation in Bengal 
for the year 1880 shews that the number of gardens 
under tea cultivation during the year was 274 against 
257 in 1879, and the area under plant was so far as 
could be ascertained, 3^.805 acres against 28,668; 
In the Darjeeling district there was an increase of 
three gardens over the number reported in the pre- 
vious year, and of 33,354 lb. in the approximate gross 
outturn of tea. The year was, on the whole, a favour- 
able one, though the red spider is said to have 
made its appearance in some of the gardens. The 
complaints from blight were few compared with th se 
made in the three previous years, Mosquito-blight, 
though it did some damage in March ana April, was 
hardly noticeable in the la'er mouths of the year 
when it is generally most active. Labour, which is 
alrm st exclusively derived from Nepaul, was more 
plentiful than in the previous year in the hills, but 
in tho Terai it was scarce. The reasou of the scarcity 
of labour in that tract is explained by tho manager 
of a tea garden in the following words : — 
"In former times when tea was more remunerative, 
larger labour forces were kept on the gardens during 
the cold season ; now more economy is evinced in 
this point in all the gardens. The coolies, who have 
be, n long in a garden, have iu most cases, become 
well off, and, wheu the wi ather is bad and the 
work heavy, can better afford to sit idle. The large 
number of estates opened out iu the Terai and Dooars 
lately, of curse, much tend to drain labour." 
In the Jul pigoree district there was also an increase 
of 10 gardens over the number returned in 1S79. 
Tho gross yield of ten amounted to 817,7651b. in the 
previous year, thus shewing an increase of 406, lS5lb. 
or MS pr cent, (lining tho year under report. As 
stated in the previous j ear's report, the gardens iu 
the district are ohlellv sto. ked with the hybrid plant. 
Manure is used to a very limited extent, the soil being 
rich with vegetable deposit. Leaf-rolling machines 
have for sonic time past been introduced into the 
district. Tho use of a tea-drying machine iu ouc of 
