G8 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
pure metal for oxygen. The purest commercial form of iron still 
contains about half per cent, of carbon, some nitrogen, with 
traces of silicon and other metals. Two analyses of cast iron, 
of each variety, — that is, “cold-blast” and “hot-blast,” will 
convey a good idea of its composition. 
COLD-BLAST. 
IIOT-BLVST. 
1 . 
2. 
1 . 
2. 
Silicon 
1-050 
1-400 
2-500 
3-140 
Graphite 
3-370 
3-184 
-3-520 
3100 
Sulphur 
0-024 
0-037 
0-045 
0-090 
Phosphorus 
0-210 
0-314 
0-318 
0-422 
Metallic Iron, 
Metallic Iron, 
93' 15 per cent. 
95 '0 per cent. 
It is necessary that we should convey to the reader, who 
may not be familiar with the technicalities of won manufacture, 
some idea of the process by which the metallic iron is obtained, 
and give some explanation of the peculiarities of the hot and 
cold blast furnaces. With the mysteries of the Catalan forcjc, 
the Fourneaux a piece of the French, and the Stiich-ofen, or 
Salamander furnace, of the Germans, we shall not deal ; atten- 
tion will be confined to the ordinary English blast-furnace for 
smelting iron with coal or coke. 
A person who has never visited an iron-making district 
cannot possibly realize the scene which it presents. Nothing 
in England is more impressive — we may say, more sublime — 
than the “ Black Country ” of South Staffordshire, as you are 
carried through it by the railway-train at night. A hundred blast- 
furnaces are belching forth then’ giant tongues of flame. The 
glaring white-hot eyes of finery -furnaces and puddling-furnaces 
look out into the darkness in fitful flashes. From scores of 
chimneys, red-hot vapour rushes wildly into the ah’, iliummating 
the ill- defined mills and forges to which they belong. All that 
is not black as night is intensely hot. Darkness and heat are 
two giants struggling for the mastery. With small aid from 
the imagination, the home of the Cyclopean smiths in the very 
roots of Vesuvius or Etna may be realized, or the Pandemonium 
of Milton fully pictured on the mind. 
“ A dungeon horrible — on all sides round 
As one great furnace, flamed ; yet from those flames 
No light, but rather darkness visible 
Served only to discover sights of woe — ■ 
) ■ a fiery deluge, fed 
With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed — 
With floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous fire.” 
Such is the external appearance of any of our large iron- 
works, the introduction to which is through those vast towers, 
