by the Pneumatic Process. 227 
all, and is, in fact, less valuable than pig iron from which it 
has been made. Hence, only the purest cake pig tron of 
Great Britain is at present suited for Mr. Bessemer’s pro- 
cess, and this is comprised in the Hematite pig iron, the 
Weardale Spathose iron, on the Forest of Dean pig iron, 
and the Blanavon and Pontypool Welsh brands, the two 
latter, however, being far inferior to the other brands for 
the Pneumatic process. Mr. Bessemer naturally inferred 
that he should be able to produce both cast steel and iron 
by his process alone, and it by no means detracts from his 
merits that he happened to overlook the fact that iron ex- 
posed in the melted state, to the action of oxygen becomes 
as it were, debased. Some persons term it “burnt iron,” 
but I call it “oxygenated iron,’ and oxygenated iron can 
never of itself constitute a commercially valuable article. 
This oxygenation can be prevented when a metal is pre- 
sent whose affinity for oxygen is greater than the affinity 
of iron for oxygen, and it can be remedied when such a 
metal is subsequently added to the oxygenated iron. When 
Mr. Bessemer read his paper, I foresaw all the difficulties 
he would have to encounter from the oxygenation of the 
iron, and I knew that the remedy was simple and attain- 
able, provided a suitable metal could be found at such a 
cost and in such quantities as would render its use 
practicable on the large scale. Out of several metals 
possessed of the requisite properties, I selected the 
metal Manganese, as found abundantly in the Spregel- 
Lilisen or Spathose pig tron of Rheinish Prussia, and com- 
bined therein with carbon and iron, the iron forming a con- 
venient vehicle, by means of which I could introduce the 
metallic manganese into melted decarbonized cast-iron 
treated by Mr. Bessemer’s process. My first experiment 
was with some Bessemer metal prepared at the Victoria 
Ironworks from hematite pig iron. The experiment was 
made in small crucibles containing only a few ounces, the 
Bessemer metal being melted in one crucible and the 
Spiegel-Eisen in another, the melted contents of the cruci- 
bles were then mixed, and asmall ingot cast. This ingot 
was forged into a bar of excellent cast steel, which was 
doubled, and welded, and made into a chisel, and was found 
for all practical purposes to be cast steel of average quality. 
I then extended the scale of my experiments, and operated 
with steal melting pots, each containing from forty to fifty 
pounds of Bessemer metal, and melting the Spiegel-Eisen 
in smaller crucibles. The most complete success resulted 
