Connecticut western news., 1874-05-01
Worcester vs. Webster.

we nave long desired to see an adequate and candid statement of the excellencies and faults of the two series ot dictionaries now before the American public. A good
 dictionary and knowledge of the true use Of 1t IS essential to scholarship in language.
 In contrasting the dictionaries we already have, we must necessarily confine our at. tention to such features of the works as have to do with the language in it's every day use. The orthodox form of words and their use by good writers are the two main features to be considered.
 In regard to these features it may be said safely-without fear of contradiction that Worcester is greatly superior ias forms orthography-and fully equal in use-de f. milton. That our present language is the product of many factors-the result of growth, is well known, and being thing of life and growth it could not at any time pass through any such reformation as was that which the great Webster tried in vain to introduce. The germ of the great work which now bears his name was an cratic nnphilosophic effort to reconstruct the form of the English language. Of course the effort was a failure, and the Pictorial Unabridged of to-day which presents sn nearly the standard form of most of our words is thu work of greater and wiser men, who little by little discarded Webster's improvements and returned to that which he unwisely threw away.
 With these facts before us is it not A cause of wonder that, while thorough ad- vertising has put Webster's Dictionary in to almost all the newspaper offices of the country and great many public schools, it's unreliability back-track course has caused it to be discarded from the editorial offices of almost all leading monthly publi- cations, and from the tables of nearly all the literary men and women of both Amer ica and England.
 While Webster has been thus returning
 seeking a resting place on ground once abandoned and condemned Worcester has preserved the historic forms and uses of our vocabulary, except as the gradual growth of the language has cut away here Q letter and there word. In this work vastly superior to Webster m every essen tial property of popular dictionary-we have the best presentation of the noble speech which we have inherited that has yet been published, - Educational Mont6ly fer Fed. 1878.
 The words in three-fourths of the stand ard works of our language are spelled ac : cording to Worcester. Among these are the following: All English publi cations all our Bibles and Prayer-books; nearly all our American classics. including the works of Bancroft, Prescott, Irving, Hawthorne, Bryant. Everett, Longfellow, Lowell, Whit tier, Holmes, etc.; the most popular Amer ican editions of English works, including those of Scott. Dickens, Thackeray, Reade, Burns, Byron. etc.; most of our works on English and American literature, including Chambers Cyclopadia of English Litera- ture, Duyckinck's Cyclopadia of Ameri- can Literature, the works of Shaw, Marsh. Muller, Hart, etc.; most of our works of reference, such as the New American Cv- clopedia, Allibone's Dictionary of Authors. Appincott's Pronouncing Biographical Dictionary, etc, etc. Among periodicals that spell in the good old way, as repre- sented in Worcester's Dictionary, are T1e ~. 4. Reofeso. AtsGastic Monthly, Galary. Nation. ~. y. Hsrasd, ~. y. Tunes. "
 Y. Ecensag Post, Graphic, Golden Aos. TAe ~. ?. World and Pa;adespAs3 Press, and many others, representing. unquestion- ably. the greater part of the culture, schol. arship, and influence of the periodical press
 A REMARKABLE SUooEss. furnace or the Lanesboro Iron company at Lanes ooro was blown out on Tuesday of last week, thus ending the most extended and successful blast ever made at thls furnace CT at any furnace in these parts at least.
 Among the furnaces of this iron ribbed valley there have been number of remark able blasts, but no charcoal furnace has, SO far as yet is known, ever equalled in a blast the quantity of car wheel iron pro- duced by the blast which closed at Lanes boro last Tuesday. It continued for eighty aasne weeks, and the production was foe MoasGmd sight hundred and forty one tons of iron. The nearest to this in production was the blast in 1861 at the East Canaan, Ct., furnace, which turned out 5S66 tons. 1t hss long been thought that these figures would never be reached again. but Berk- shire beats Connecticut by nearly 800 tons. The next in production at single blast is the Richmond furnace, whose highest product was reached in the blast of 1868, when 46s7 tons were made.
 To appreciate the good fortune of the Lanesboro company it should be stated that long blast is dependent upon every stone in the hearth being perfect, which rarely happens, and can never be certainly known until tried, however close the selec- tion and inspection while the hearth is un- der construction. Another fact or two may be of interest in this connection. Car wheel iron, which is called high iron,' is a much more difficult thing to make than How iron.' used for foundry purposes. and 5000 tons is considered 8 good average blast. The Lanesboro company, too, make their iron entirely from single ore, taken from their Sherman ore bed, which is a tough, difficult ore to smelt, but repaying for these drawbacks in pro. ducing an iron of great strength, free from shrinkage, very 'fuid,' and of remarkable eyenness. All the furnaces south of here. in the valley, use mixture of ores which aid in fiuxing each other, and are not 30 difficult to melt, though all use the brown hematite ores which present externally the same appearance though each bed has pe- culiarities of it's own, and differ in some repects from all others, as is we'll known among the iron mem of the Yalley.-Bsrk- shire County Eagle.
 TThe hearth stone, to which is attrib- | uted SO much credit in the artlcle above, in 1 attaining this remarkable success, was fur nished by Mir. l. N. Bartram of Sharon, Conn, and was taken from his quarriea near Pitts6eld Mass. It appears there are but very few quarries of this stone in this | country, and Mr. Bartram seems to have searched out those Tn this region, a very important quarry of which he has on l