153 
Ordinary Meeting, December 24th, 1861. 
J. P. Joule, LL.D., President, in the Chair. 
Mr. Brockbank exhibited some samples of steel manu- 
factured by Mr. Bessemer’s process. These specimens had 
been bent and twisted cold, and showed a remarkable degree 
of ductility. He stated that the Bessemer steel was one of 
the most plastic and manageable of metals — more so even 
than copper. It could be bent, flanged, or twisted, either 
hot or cold, without annealing, and over a considerable range 
of temperature — which is not the case with ordinary steel or 
copper. 
A plate of 18 inches diameter had been forced through a 
series of dies until it formed a tube 13 feet long and If inches 
diameter, without any crack or flaw. 
A ring of metal could, at one heat, be hammered into a die 
to form a locomotive engine chimney top. 
In drilling a circular hole into a plate, continuous shavings 
are formed — whereas, in copper, or Low Moor plates, or any 
other metal, the shavings break into pieces -j^-in. long. 
Thin sheets of the Bessemer soft steel can be bent back- 
ivards and forwards hundreds of times without a fracture, and 
are almost as flexible as paper. 
Mr. Binney stated that many years since he had commu- 
nicated to the Society a description of some markings on the 
surface of the Kerridge flags. At that time he could not 
satisfactorily account for them. He afterwards published, in 
Vol. X (new series) of the Memoirs, a Paper on similar mark- 
ings, found in the Upholland flags, near Wigan, and attri- 
buted them to the burrowing of an animal similar to the 
common lug worm of our coast, the arenicola piscatorum. 
Proceedings — Lit. & Phil. Society — No. 7.— Session 1861-62. 
