Indian Steel • 
713 
1885.] 
which the neighbourhood of Nirmal is a part. We have 
also a certain amount of modern and recent information as 
to wutz manufacture, which is not quite extinCt. 
Superior steels, including wutz, were formerly made from 
the ores of Bajaur, near Peshawar, and in Kachh ; proba- 
bly also in Assam, where large cannon were made, and in 
Gualior, Bijawar, and Indor : these places and provinces 
comprise the whole of the seats of old steel manufacture in 
Northern India that are now known. 
In Southern India the probable seats were Palaman 
(Bengal), Jashpur and Gangpur, Madgole, Sambalpur, Nar- 
singpur, Surat, and various places in the Konkan, Haidar- 
abad territory, Satara, Maisur territory, Kadapa, and 
perhaps several places in the extreme south of the pe- 
ninsula. 
The essential points in wutz-making seem to have been 
the use of iron of two ores, one magnetic sand, or magnetite 
obtained by mechanical separation from rock, the other a 
rich laterite ; an enormous amount of fuel, perpetual re- 
construction of furnaces, certain charcoals, and leaves and 
roots of certain plants ; possibly also small quantities of 
some flags and fluxes. Some of the charcoals used were 
Bamboo charcoal, sal ( Shorea robusta), bijasal ( Dipterocarpus 
marsupium), mhawa ( Bassia latifolia), teak, dhao ( Conocarpus 
latifolia ) and ker ( Acacia catechu) ; also green leaves of the 
Convolvulus laurifolia or Ipomea, stems of the Cassia 
auriculata, and leaves of the ak or madar (a large As- 
clepiad, Calatropis gigantea), as well as the chaicoal of its 
roots. , , , . r 
In olden times, when fuel was plentiful, the chief requi- 
site was evidently the magnetic iron sand, or magnetite, 
capable of mechanical reduction; and appaiently it was 
also indispensable, while much of the rest may have a - 
mitted of substitutes under some variety of treatment. 
There are doubtless theories that some special excellence 
may have been locally due to amount of protoxide ot iron, 
to manganiferous ortitaniferous ores, or to slightly calciferous 
ores ; but none of these are fully proved. There may have 
been some special secrets of treatment or manufacture,, but 
everything points to excessive purity of iron, judicious 
blending, and selected charcoals, as the chief matters on 
which general excellence was based. . . 
In India magnetite occurs in beds or veins, in metamor- 
phic or gneissic rock, also in transition lock, an in a a 
trap ; apparently not in other formations to any arge 
VOL. VII. (THIRD SERIES) 3 A 
