The Sun.
London, England, 1852-04-09 00:00:00

of Durham, similar to those used in Belgium, which
was little used, owing to the deficiency of means of
transport. This country was by no means rich in the
micaceous iron ores of the northern countries of
Europe and the United States, which was considered
the finest class of iron ore known, although some of
them existed in Dartmoor and other parts of Devon,
but were worked to a very small extent. Of pure
white carbonate, the Sperms iron of the German
mineralogist, no specimen was exhibited in the Exhi-
bition, but it had since been found to exist in West
Somersetahire. The next class of ores, the discovery
of which marked a new epoch in the iron trade, and
which had occurred Simultaneously with the develop-
ment of facilities of transport by railways, without
which they would have been comparatively worth-
less, were those which occupied a position at the base
of the oolitic formation, which commenced on the
east coast of this island from the south bank of the
river Tees to Scarborough, stretched through York-
shire, Lincolnshire, Rutlandshire, Northamptonshire,
Oxfordshire, and Dorsetshire to Le me Regis, where
being turned aside by the granitic formations of
Devon, it was prolonged
into France. It
was first worked at Middlesborough in the north,
where two or three years ago deposits of
iron were discovered by a workman, and the bed
of which was found to be li feet thick, and to contain
30 per cent. of iron, and could be raised at a less
nd peculiar,i n
others being
ot a brownish tinge; and,
coat than the blackbands of Scotland. Its
characterlu blue
colour,
in parts of a greenish
b
from its peculiar qualities, it could be produced at 3s.
was
a
to 3s. 6d. per ton. The existence of this oolitic for-
mation in Northamptonshire was long known ; but it
was only till after the Exhibition that its real value
had been ascertained. The supply of this ironstone
for all practical purposes would be inexhaustible for a
long series of years, and was found to be most valu-
able for mixing with the argillaceous stones of South i
Staffordshire, which could not otherwise have long
maintained its manufacture of
pig iron.
After de-
scribing the properties of the beds of argillaceous
ironstones of the liar, and the slate formations of
North Wales, and the green sand and Wealden clay
formation, the lecturer
alluded to the evident mi-
neral resources possessed by Ireland, which, although
unworked, contained every species of ore to which
he had directed attention. Adverting to the
improvements in the manufacture of iron, be stated
that the first great improvement, and the base of all
subsequent advance, was the smelting of iron by coal,
which was known in 1620, but not fully applied till
1740. The weekly production of iron from the first
poke furnaces was only 10 or 12 tons, in 1788 it was
17 to 18, in 1796 30 tons per furnace, in 1825 it was
42 tons per furnace, and in 1851 the average weekly
produce was upwards of 100 tons per furnace. In
South Wales, Scotland, and South Staffordshire,
there were furnaces capable of producing 200 tons
per week. Thus, in little more than a century, the
improvements had been so great, that two furnaces
now produced a larger quantity of iron than the en-
tire furnaces in blast in 1740, whilst the general
iron trade had so extended itself, that now several
single firms produced from four to fivefold the entire
make of the kingdom in 1740. This increase during
the last 25 years was owing to the system of heating
the blast previously to its being forced into the fur-
nace, which was first introduced in Scotland, raising
the quantity of iron made there from 20,000 tons
in 1820, to 200,000 in 18819, or to 775,000 in the 12
following years ; and it was gradually intro-
duced all over England. The next improvement
was the application of waste gases to raising steam
and heating the blast. The result of these improve-
ments on prices and increased supply had been very
great. . From 1804 to 1820, Pig iron averaged from
'a to 9/. a ton, being protected by a duty of 61. 103.
on foreign pig iron. In 1825, this duty was reduced
to 1/. 10e. From 1825 to 1847 the price fluctuated
from 21. 17s. 6d. to 71. per ton, and from that year
to the present it had ranged from 3/ 10s. to V. 12s.
6d. Every reduction in price had been followed by
increased demand, and the removal of protection had
led to greater attention, both to economy of produc-
tion and the quality of iron, which was to compete
with foreign iron ;and the result had been a gradual
lessening of the demand for expensive foreign iron,
from which steel was universally made, and thus
extending most materially the hardware and cutlery
trade of this kingdom. After glancing at the diffi-
culties and prejudices all these improvements had to
contend with, and the ignorance of the value of
ores, which had led to the neglect of important sources
of ore supply, and often postponed great discoveries,
and which were attributable to the absence of any
public collection of ores, and the non-existence of any
public means of instruction in mining and metallurgy,
the lecturer proceeded to eulogise the efforts which
had been made by the establishment of the Museum
of Practical Geology, and the efforts directed to this
end produced by the Exhibition and its promoters to
remedy this evil ; and, in a rapid review of the present
state of the iron trade, alluded to the number of per-
sons employed in all its departments, amounting to
not less than 650,000 to 700,000, who were well paid
and who were as a class intelligent, though from the
nature of their occupation less cultivated than it was
hoped they would soon be, and concluded by saying
it is impossible not to be struck with the vast and
almost inexhaustible supplies of iron which we pos-
sess, and with the wonderful fact that the extraordi-
nary demand which railways and other requirements
have produced should have led, not to an increased
price,but to the constant discovery of new and
cheaper sources of supply. In this respect the iron
trade illustrates most strikingly what appears to be a
general law—that the natural resources of the world
are invariably developed at the times when the pro-
gress of society most require them, and when that
Progress is already such as to enable us to avail our-
selves to the greatest advantage of new discoveries.
Thus with the iron manufacture ; at first the stores
of fuel which our forests contained, and the iron ores
which cropped out at the surface of the ground, were
amply sufficient for our purposes; then came the
knowledge of the power of smelting with coal, and
with this knowledge the steatneengine placed in our
hands the vast stores of mineral fuel of our coal fields.
The modern system of railways next produced a de-
mand for iron of an unprecedented character; and
simultaneously with this demand occurred the
introduction of the hot blast and the use of the
blackbands of Scotland. The more intimate
connexion of the old and
the new world by
means of transatlantic steamers is followed by the
discovery of Californian and Australian gold; giving
to the commercial and civilised world at large an ac-
tivity and a movement such as it has never before
witnessed—causing streams of Population to flow in
unprecedented numbers from the older countries of
Europe to comparatively new regions, and bidding
fair to make the vast and magnificent countries of
Central America and Australia the seats of great and
important empires. And these populations, not iso-
lated as the colonists of old--not
struggling with long
periods of poverty and slow growth, but springing up
rapidly into flourishing communities —all take with
them into their new homes the social wants and re-
quirements of the older countries which they have
left. Iron steamers will be required to continue
their connexion with those countries, and to carry
on the extensive commerce they will originate;
new lines of railroad will be necessitated, not
from towns to towns, but
from
state to state,
and even from ocean to ocean. And not only in
America are these a might
- -., movements at work, but
elsewhere also. In India, with its 180,000,000 of
population, railroads must be laid down ; the Govern-
ment of that country
cannot be held without them ;
its natural resources cannot be developed without
them ; the rapidly extending requirements of our
cotton manufactures will necessitate them ; and every
line of railway that is laid down will lead to the de-
mand for ever-increasing quantities of iron ; and
even in our own country the sanitary measures to
which such attention is now being directed will re-
suire an extremely large and increasing supply of
iron, both for an abundant sup ply of water to the
manufacturing dense populations of our districts, and
88 of building,
also for the purpos which the rapidly-
increasing prosperity of our working classes will no
longer permit to be overlooked as in the past. If the
increase during the last 25 years has been so
great—from 600 00 2 500 000—there
i 0 tons to 1 I increase
during every reason to expect an equal increase
during the next, 25 years, as the general require-
ments of society
must develop t ern-
(if not in an acceleratin ratio ; and how to supply
these requirements another great source of iron is
. ,
disclosed to us and blackband
us ; to the argillaceo
ironstones of our coal fields and the •
beematites of our
,
carboniferous limestones are added the oolitio ores,
with the rich per cents
fi ge of iron they contain, and
the low cost at which the can be raised, and their
exhaustless supplies. Can- this constant progression
of means—this constant development of one resource
after another s socie
-t
ty requires it, be other than a
wise and most beneficenarrangement, which has for
its purpose the advancement
of society to an even
higher
higher and
point, and the attainment of that
amity among all the nations of the earth which must
ultimately prevail.—(Cheers.) Nur does it appear a
less wise and a .
beneficent arrangement that these
stores of mineral wealth so needful for the
progress should world'sexist in climates
temperate as our own, which has produced the
strong and vigorous A Ing 0- Saxon race to whom work
is less a toil than a passion, amongst
whom there are so
many who do not shrink to devote their entire lives
to the development and execution of some great en-
terprise. But ifthe A 1 Saxon race has been given
ng to-Saxon
large a proportion of the mineral riches of the
world, it must not be forgotten that equal to the
power thus committed to their care is the responsibi-
lity thereto attached and they must of necessity be
the
the guiders and promoters of the advancing
civi-
lisation of the present ; seeing that the very basis of
that civilisation is to be found in the increased and
increasing Power to adapt to the requirements of so-
ciety the great physical resources of the world, and