216 
POPULAE SCIENCE EEYIEW. 
the phenomenon of aggregating like rouleaux of coin ; I therefore call it 
‘nummulating.’ A defect or absence of this power is found in all persons 
whom I have examined, who have been for a long time subject to malarious 
fevers.” 
METALLURGY, MINERALOGY, AND MINING. 
The Progress of Iron and Steel Industries . — Mr. David Forbes, F.R.S., 
the foreign secretary to the Iron and Steel Institute, has just published, in 
the latter’s journal, a very valuable report of the progress made both in 
England and the Continent during the past quarter. From this we find that 
though the Iron industries have been stopped in France by the war, yet that 
during the first half of the year their returns were greater than last year. 
Thus : — 
Cast Iron. Wrought Iron. 
Tons Tons 
1st half-year 1870 . . . 714,892 510,528 
1st „ 1869 . . . 699,749 497,828 
15,143 
13,200 
Again, the production of steel for the first half-year 1870 is thus esti- 
mated : — 
Tons 
Bessemer steel 25,360 
.Martin and other steel 44,219 
Total 69^579^ 
The Report deals with the produce in the different countries of the world, 
such as Germany (the different States of), North America, the United States, 
Norway, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Upper Silesia. It contains, besides, 
abstracts of the more important means employed of manufacture, and is 
altogether a most valuable essay, which it is to be hoped the Society will 
continue to enable Mr. Forbes to bring out. 
Mechanical Properties of Steel possessing Phosphorus. — M. Gruner, Professor 
of Metallurgy at the School of Mines at Paris, has published in the 11 Annales 
des Mines,” 1870 (xvii., p. 346), a paper on the Mechanical Properties of Steel 
containing Phosphorus. Premising by stating that in a previous memoir 
on the Heaton process (“ Examen du Procede Heaton,” Paris, 1869) he had 
sought to prove (1) when pig iron containing phosphorus, but poor in silicon, 
is refined with nitrate of soda, that, although the greater part of the phos- 
phorus is eliminated, it still retains two or three thousandth parts of this sub- 
stance, if the amount of nitrate employed be below 13 to 15 per cent, of the 
weight of the pig iron. (2) That these two or three thousandths of phos- 
phorus will render the product more or less brittle. (3) That the presence 
of the phosphorus increases up to a certain point the resistance to fracture, 
provided it be tested by a slow and gradually applied force. (4) That, as 
before shown by Dr. Wedding, steel not containing more than 0-005 of 
phosphorus may be easily worked cold ; goes on at length into the considera- 
tion of the mechanical properties of certain samples of steel, the testing of 
which had been conducted by Mr, Fairbairn, whose results are given in a 
