73 
been sent to England from Japan, the high prices now 
ruling having attracted supplies of iron from distant coun- 
tries. 
Finished bar iron is produced at the present time in 
countries where labour is cheap and charcoal plentiful at an 
exceedingly low price as compared with present values in 
England. The specimens now exhibited cost only £6 per 
ton for the bloom and £8 per ton for the finished bar. The 
sizes of the bars are however verv small, but it is a remark- 
able fact that on so small a scale iron of the very highest 
quality can be made and sold at half the price of English 
bars made on the largest scale with all the advantages of 
our modem machinery and appliances. It is believed that 
this iron is made by a similar process to that followed by 
the Homans in Britain, the remains of furnaces or “ bloom- 
eries” on Ennerdale lake being of this class. 
The President said that he had made another observa- 
tion of the position of the freezing point in the thermometer 
used in making the observations recorded in the Proceed- 
ings for April 16, 1867, and February 22, 1870. The gradual 
rise of the zero during twenty-nine years will be seen by 
the adjoining diagram, the ordinates representing divisions 
etched on the glass stem each corresponding to -rhv of a 
degree Fahrenheit. 
