close by the furnaces. Transportation of the fuel in such cases is a matter of secondary importance. The mineral coals are a more certain dependence in this manufacture, and are cheaply conveyed from the mines on the great lines of transportation, so that furnaces may be placed anywhere upon these lines, with reference more especially to proximity of ores. Thus they can be grouped together in greater numbers than is practicable with charcoal furnaces. Their establishment, however, involves the outlay of much capital, for the anthracite furnaces are all built upon a large scale, with a capacity of producing from twenty to thirty tons of pig iron a day. This requires machinery of great power to furnish the immense quantities of air, amounting in the large stacks to fifteen tons or more every hour, and propel it through the dense column, of fifty to sixty feet in height, of heavy materials that fill the furnace. The air actually exceeds in weight all the other materials introduced into the furnace, and its efficiency in promoting combustion and generating intensity of heat is greatly increased by the concentration to which it is subjected when blown in under a pressure of six or eight pounds to the square inch. It is rendered still more efficient by being heated to temperature sufficient to melt lead before it is introduced into the furnace; and this demands the construction of heating ovens, through which the blast is forced from the blowing cylinders in a series of iron pipes, arranged so as to absorb as much as possible of the waste heat from the combustible gases that issue from the top of the stack, and are led through these ovens before they are finally allowed to escape. The weight of anthracite consumed is not far from double that of the iron made, and the ores usually exceed in weight the fuel. The flux is a small and cheap item, its weight ranging from one-eighth to one-third that of the ores. The location of furnaces with reference to the market for the iron is a consideration of no small importance, for the advantages of cheap material may be overbalanced by the difference of a few dollars in the cost of placing in market a product of so little value to the ton weight as pig iron. The following statement gave the cost of the different items which went to make up the total expense of production at the localities named in 1859. The advance in the value of ores, cost of transportation, labor, and coal, have increased these items about 75 per cent. since 1863. At different points on the Hudson river, anthracite furnaces are in operation, which are supplied with hematites from Columbia and Dutchess counties, N. Y., and from the neighboring counties in Massachusetts, at prices varying from $2.25 to $3.00 per ton; averaging about $2.50. They also use magnetic ores from Lake Champlain, and some from the Highlands below West Point, the latter costing $2.50, and the former $3.50 to $4.50 per ton; the average being about $3.50. The quantities of these ores purchased for the ton of iron produced are about two tons of hematite and one of magnetic ore, making the cost for the ores $6.75. Two tons of anthracite cost usually $9, and the flux for fuel about 35 cents. Actual contract prices for labor and superintendence have been $4 per ton. Thus the total expense for the ton of pig iron is about $20.10; or, allowing for repairs and interest on capital, full $21. In the Lehigh valley, in Pennsylvania, are numerous furnaces, which are supplied with anthracite at the low rate of $3 per ton, or $6 to the ton of iron. The ores are mixed magnetic and hematites, averaging in the proportions used about $3 per ton, or, at the rate consumed of 23 tons, $7.50 to the ton of iron. Allowing the same amount-$4.35 for other items, as at the Hudson river furnaces, the total cost is $17.85; or, with interest and repairs, nearly $19 per ton. The difference is in great part made up to the furnaces on the Hudson by their convenience to the great markets of New York, Troy, and Albany. The charcoal iron made near Baltimore shows a higher cost of production than either of the above, and it is also subject to greater expenses of transportation to market, which is chiefly at the rolling mills and nail factories of Massachusetts. Its superior quality causes a demand for the product and sustains the business. For this iron per ton 24 tons of ore are consumed, costing $3.624 per ton, or $9.06; fuel, 3 cords at $2.50, $8.75; flux, oyster shells, 30 cts.; labor (including $1.50 for charring) $2.75; other expenses, $2; total, $22.86. At many localities in the interior of Pennsylvania and Ohio, iron is made at less cost, but their advantages are often counterbalanced by additional expenses incurred in delivering the metal, and obtaining the proceeds of its sale. Increased facilities of transportation, however, are rapidly removing these distinctions. At Danville, on the Susquehanna river, Columbia county, Pennsylvania, the cost of production has been reduced to an unusually low amount, by reason of large supplies of ore close at hand, the cheapness of anthracite, and the very large scale of the operations. Pig iron, as shown by the books of the company, has been made for $11 per ton. Its quality, however, was inferior, so that, with the expenses of transportation added, it could not be placed in the eastern markets to compete with other irons. Pig iron is produced more cheaply on the Ohio river and some of its tributaries than elsewhere, but there are no furnaces in the United States which can make a good article much less than $27 per ton. DISTRIBUTION OF THE ORES. duction of the blast furnace for the preceding nine years had averaged only about "216 tons of cast iron in hollow ware, stoves, machinery, and pig iron"-a less quantity than is now produced in a week by some of the anthracite furnaces. One forge making bar iron direct from the ore produced forty tons annually, and another 100 tons, consuming 550 bushels of charcoal to the ton. The cost of this, fortunately, was only from A $3.75 to $4.00 per hundred bushels. portion of the product was transported to Boston, the freight alone costing $25 per ton. In Vermont these ores are found in the metamorphic slates of the Green Mountains, and are worked to some extent for mixing with the hematite ores, which are more abundant, being found in many of the towns through the central portion of the state, from Canada to Massachusetts. In 1850 the number of blast furnaces was ten, but their production probably did not reach 4,000 The magnetic and specular ores of the tons per annum, and has since dwindled United States are found in the belt of away to a much less amount. At the same metamorphic rocks-the gneiss, quartz rock, time there were seven furnaces in Berkshire, mica and talcose slates,and limestones-which Mass., near the hematite beds that are found ranges along to the east of the Alleghanies, in the towns along the western line of the and spreads over the principal part of the state. These had a working capacity of New England states. It is only, however, about 12,000 tons of pig iron annually, and in certain districts, that this belt is produc- this being made from excellent ores, with tive in iron ores. The hematites belong to the same group, and the important districts of the three ores may be noticed in the order in which they are met from Canada to Alabama. Similar ores are also abundant in Missouri, and to the south of Lake Superior. NEW ENGLAND STATES.-In New Hampshire magnetic and specular ores are found in large quantities in a high granitic hill called the Baldface Mountain, in the town of Bartlett. The locality is not conveniently accessible, and its remoteness from coal mines will probably long keep the ore, rich and abundant as it is, of no practical value. At Piermont, on the western border of the state, specular ore, very rich and pure, is also abundant, but not worked. At Franconia a small furnace, erected in 1811, was run many years upon magnetic ores, obtained from a bed of moderate size, and which in 1824 had been worked to the depth of 200 feet. In 1830 the iron establishments of this place were still objects of considerable interest, though from the accounts of them published in the American Journal of Science of that year, it appears that the annual pro charcoal for fuel, its reputation was high and the prices remunerative; but as charcoal increased in price, and the cheaper anthracitemade iron improved in quality, the business became unprofitable; so that the extensive hematite beds are now chiefly valuable for furnishing ores to the furnaces upon the Hudson river, where anthracite is delivered from the boats that have come through the Delaware and Hudson canal, and magnetic ores are brought by similar cheap conveyance from the mines on the west side of Lake Champlain. Through Connecticut, down the Housatonic valley, very extensive beds of hematite have supplied the sixteen furnaces which were in operation ten years ago. The great Salisbury bed has already been named. In the first half of the present century it produced from 250,000 to 300,000 tons of the very best ore; the iron from which, when made with cold blast, readily brought from $6 to $10 per ton more than the ordinary kinds of pig iron. The Kent ore bed was of similar character, though not so extensive. NEW YORK.-Across the New York state line, a number of other very extensive deposits of hematite supported seven blast fur naces in Columbia and Dutchess counties, and now furnish supplies to those along the Hudson river. In Putnam county, magnetic ores succeed the hematites, and are developed in considerable beds in Putnam Valley, east from Cold Spring, where they were worked for the supply of forges during the last century. These beds can again furnish large quantities of rich ore. On the other side of the river, very productive mines of magnetic ore have been worked near Fort Montgomery, six miles west from the river. At the Greenwood furnace, back from West Point, was produced the strongest cast iron ever tested, which, according to the report of the officers of the ordnance department, made to Congress in 1856, after being remelted several times to increase its density, exhibited a tenacity of 45,970 lbs. to the square inch. The beds at Monroe, near the New Jersey line, are of vast extent; but a small portion of the enormous quantities of ore in sight, however, makes the best iron. Mining was commenced here in 1750, and a furnace was built in 1751, but operations have never been carried on upon a scale commensurate with the abundance of the ores. In the northern counties of New York, near Lake Champlain, are numerous mines of rich magnetic ores. Some of the most extensive bloomary establishments in the United States are supported by them in Clinton county, and many smaller forges are scattered along the course of the Ausable river, where water power near some of the ore beds presents a favorable site. Bar iron is made at these establishments direct from the ores; and at Keeseville nail factories are in operation, converting a portion of the iron into nails. In Essex county there are also many very productive mines of the same kind of ore, and Port Henry and its vicinity has furnished large quantities, not only to the blast furnaces that were formerly in operation here, but to those on the Hudson, and te puddling furnaces in different parts of the country, particularly about Boston. In the interior of Essex county, forty miles back from the lake, are the extensive mines of the Adirondac. The ores are rich as well as inexhaustible, but the remoteness of the locality, and the difficulty attending the working of them, owing to their contamination with titanium, detract greatly from their importance. On the other side of the Adirondac mountains, in St. Lawrence county, near Lake Ontario, are found large beds of specular ores, which have been worked to some extent in several blast furnaces. They occur along the line of junction of the granite and the Potsdam sandstone. The iron they make is inferior-suitable only for castings. The only other ores of any importance in the state are the fossiliferous ores of the Clinton group, which are worked near Oneida Lake, and at several points along a narrow belt of country near the south shore of Lake Ontario. They have sustained five blast furnaces in this region, and are transported in large quantities by canal to the anthracite furnaces at Scranton, in Pennsylvania, the boats returning with mineral coal for the furnaces near Oneida Lake. NEW JERSEY.-From Orange county, in New York, the range of gneiss and hornblende rocks, which contain the magnetic and specular ores, passes into New Jersey, and spreads over a large part of Passaic and Morris, and the eastern parts of Sussex and Warren counties. The beds of magnetic ore are very large and numerous, and have been worked to great extent, especially about Ringwood, Dover, Rockaway, Boonton, and other towns, both in blast furnaces and in bloomaries. At Andover, in Sussex county, a great body of specular ores furnished for a number of years the chief supplies for the furnaces of the Trenton Iron Company, situated at Philipsburg, opposite the mouth of the Lehigh. On the range of this ore, a few miles to the north-east, are extensive deposits of Franklinite iron ore accompanying the zinc ore of this region. This unusual variety of ore consists of peroxide of iron about 66 per cent., oxide of zinc 17, and oxide of manganese 16. It is smelted at the works of the New Jersey Zinc Company at Newark, producing annually about 2,000 tons of pig iron. The metal is remarkable for its large crystalline faces and hardness, and is particularly adapted for the manufacture of steel, as well as for producing bar iron of great strength. As the forests, which formerly supplied abundant fuel for the iron works of this region, disappeared before the increasing demands, attention was directed to the inexhaustible sources of anthracite up the Lehigh valley in Pennsylvania, with which this iron region was connected by the Morris canal and the Lehigh canal; and almost the first successful application of this fuel to the smelting of iron ores upon a large scale was made at Stanhope, by Mr. Edwin Post. A new Magnetic ores are found upon the Lehigh, or South mountain, the margin on the south of the fertile limestone valley which con era in the iron manufacture was thus intro- ginia." The principal sources of iron in the duced, and an immense increase in the pro-state are, first, the hematites of Lehigh and duction soon followed, as the charcoal fur- Berks counties-the range continuing pronaces gave place to larger ones constructed ductive through Lancaster, also on the other for anthracite. The Lehigh valley, lying on side of the intervening district of the new the range of the iron ores toward the south- red sandstone formation. The ores are west, also produced large quantities of ore, found in large beds in the limestone valley, which, however, was almost exclusively between the South and the Kittatinny hematite. Hence, an interchange of ores mountains; those nearest the Lehigh supply has been largely carried on for furnishing the furnaces on that river, already amounting the best mixtures to the furnaces of the two to twenty-three in operation and four more in portions of this iron district; and the oper- course of construction, and those nearer the ations of the two must necessarily be consid- Schuylkill supply the furnaces along this ered together. The annual production, in- river. The largest bed is the Moselem, in cluding that of the bloomaries of New Jer- Berks county, six miles west-south-west from sey, has reached, within a few years, about Kutztown. It has been very extensively 140,000 tons of iron. But in a prosperous worked, partly in open excavation and partly condition of the iron business this can be by underground mining, the workings reachlargely increased without greatly adding to ing to the depth of 165 feet. Over 20,000 the works already established, while the ca- tons a year of ore have been produced, at a pacity of the iron mines and supplies of fuel cost of from $1.30 to $1.50 per ton. are unlimited. The proximity of this district to the great cities, New York and Philadelphia, adds greatly to its importance.. PENNSYLVANIA. Although about one-tains the hematite beds. These, howthird of all the iron manufactured in the United States is the product of the mines of Pennsylvania, and of the ores carried into the state, the comparative importance of her mines has been greatly overrated, and their large development is rather owing to the abundant supplies of mineral coal conveniently at hand for working the ores, and, as remarked by Mr. Lesley ("Iron Manufacturer's Guide," p. 433), "to the energetic, persevering German use for a century of years of what ores do exist, than to any extraordinary wealth of iron of which she can boast. Her reputation for iron is certainly not derived from any actual pre-eminence of mineral over her sister states. New York, New Jersey, Virginia, and North Carolina, are far more liberally endowed by nature in this respect than she. The immense magnetic deposits of New York and New Jersey almost disappear just after entering her limits. The brown hematite beds of her great valley will not seem extraordinary to one who has become familiar with those of New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, Virginia, and Tennessee. Her fossil ores are lean and uncertain compared with those of the south; and the carbonate and hematized carbonate outcrops in and under her coal measures will hardly bear comparison with those of the grander outspread of the same formations in Ohio, Kentucky, and western Vir ever, are quite unimportant, the dependence of the great iron furnaces of the Lehigh for these ores being on the more extensive mines of New Jersey; while the only supplies of magnetic ores to the furnaces of the Schuylkill and the Susquehanna are from the great Cornwall mines, four miles south of Lebanon. An immense body of magnetic iron ore, associated with copper ores, has been worked for a long time at this place, at the junction of the lower silurian limestones and the red sandstone formation. The bed lies between dikes of trap, and exhibits peculiarities that distinguish it from the other bodies of iron ore on this range. The Warwick, or Jones' mine, in the south corner of Berks county, resembles it in some particulars. Its geological position is in the upper slaty layers of the Potsdam sandstone, near the meeting of this formation with the new red sandstone. Trap dikes penetrate the ore and the slates, and the best ore is found at both mines near the trap. Not far from York, Pa., an ore known as the Codorus Iron Ore has been raised for some years, but was regarded as almost worthless, but recent experiments have led to the discovery that it contains the exact ingredients necessary to make it the best of fluxes for reducing the other ores of that region to steel of excellent quality without any intermediate process. Along the Maryland line, on both sides of the |