out of which the civilised world contrives to raise a respectable exterior. Without the former Lancashire might still have been a quiet, unpretending county; without the latter, Yorkshire would still be a sporting, grouse-shooting district, neither disturbed by the noise of steam engines, nor blackened by the smoke of factories.

The traveller, as he gazes at those gigantic buildings, high chimneys, and soot-begrimmed houses, with their pale coloured occupants, must, however, now and then ask himself where all the raw material comes from, which these great factories absorb, day after day, and year after year? He, probably, is aware that cotton is the product of a tree, and wool the product of the sheep; and at this point the subject drops. But where the unreflective traveller leaves off, we propose to begin, simply premising that our remarks will be confined to wool. The cotton interest must take care of itself for the present.

Our chief supplies of this article come from the Southern colonies, the vast plains of which, combined with a pretty temperate climate, seem peculiarly favourable to the growth of wool. There the squatter, with his flocks, ranging from two or three thousand to a hundred thousand, leads a life as truly pastoral as any we could select from the pages of Virgil; seeing nothing of the world, perpetually looking upon sheep and "runs," his monotonous existence occasionally varied with a dog hunt, or a visit to a neighbouring squatter, and once or twice a year a journey into Adelaide, Melbourne, or Sydney. If fortunate, he saves money, and at length returns home to live in the old, old country, and lay his bones amongst his forefathers.

The average weight of wool per sheep is about two pounds and a half; the shearing season is from September to January. The wool undergoes a preliminary sorting at the stations, whence it is conveyed on bullock drays, or down the Murray river in flat bottomed steamers, to the shipping port; it is then repacked into square or oblong bags, weighing from two to four cwt. each, and sent to England. The freight varies from a halfpenny to five farthings a pound. pound. The quality differs, of course, considerably-the greasy wool realises, at the present time, about ten pence to thirteen pence a pound, the finest sort, as much as

half a crown. The larger portion, however,

ranges between these two extremes. On its arrival in London, the bales are placed in warehouses, the principal of which are the London Docks, Messrs. Brown and Eagle's, and Gooch and Cowan's. The wool is divided into lots of from one to ten bales each, and sold by auction. The quantity thus sold amounted during last year to upwards of 200,000 bales. It is a novel and amusing sight to

on show; hundreds of buyers are there, looking eagerly at the qualities-Frenchmen, Germans, Yorkshiremen, West of England men, jabbering away, with wool all around, on their coats, on their trousers, and sometimes two or three feet deep on the floors. The sales, of which there are four annually, generally continue for about five consecutive weeks, and in the evening of each day, wool to the value of more than seventy thousand pounds passes under the hammer. It is afterwards sent to the manufacturing districts of Great Britain and the Continent, where it becomes metamorphosed into the coarse hosiery of the peasant, equally with the fine black cloth of the gentle

Each colony of the Australian group has, with the exception of the Swan River settlement, largely increased its production within the last few years; and now New Zealand promises to be a considerable wool-growing province. Hitherto, the gold discoveries have in no respect affected the more steady pursuits of the squatter; large tracts of land have certainly been occupied by the diggers, but the flock masters have found new runs by penetrating into the imperfectly explored interior.

Another quarter from which we receive considerable supplies of wool is the Cape of Good Hope. Every year this branch of commerce materially expands, while the quality of the article continues to improve to such a degree as to compete with the produce of its more southern neighbour. This kind of wool is much sought after by the continental buyers to mix with their fine Saxony fleeces. The arrivals from the Cape in 1842, amounted to 6,431 bales; in 1852, to 21,005 bales; while in 1850, the quantity reached 50,580 bales.

The East Indies and China produce a low quality, much used in blankets, horse cloths, and railway wrapper manufacture. The heat of the climate renders the wool harsh and hairy; and

The vast mountain districts of South America furnish a peculiar kind, called "alpaca" wool. The staple is soft, fine, and long; the prevailing colours are black, white, brown, and gray. Its uses are various, as, for instance, ladies dresses, coat linings, and cloth for warm climates, or even an English summer. It is put into small packages, termed ballots, weighing above fifty pounds each, which are slung across mules' backs, and thus conveyed over the mountains to the shipping ports of Chili and Peru, &c. Nearly all of it is sent to Liverpool, a very small quantity only coming to London. The present price is about 2s. 3d. a pound. Mr. Titus Salt, the well known manufacturer of Bradford, is understood to have been the first person who introduced this article into use; when others failed to see its advantages he bought all the imports, held the stock till he had created a market for this novel kind of cloth, and reaped the reward of his bold enterprise in the shape of a large balance at his bankers.

The trade in goats' wool is confined to the Greek houses. This beautiful silky substance comes from Asia Minor chiefly, the port of shipment being Constantinople. It realises from 2s. to 2s. 6d. a pound. It would be tedious to designate the variety of uses to which it is applied, from button trimmings to velvet-plush linings; from shawls to lace, which, in France, supersedes the costly fabrics of Valenciennes and Chantilly. During the Crimean war there was a considerable interruption in the supplies. In 1846, the arrivals were 5,231 bales; in 1856, 13,427 bales. Each bale weighs about 160 pounds. The wool is not sold by public auction, as with colonial, but by private contract.

The extraordinary expansion in the growth of colonial wool, combined with the necessity of making cheap and tolerably durable cloths, has seriously lessened the supplies from the continent. Twenty years ago, Germany and Spain possessed almost a monopoly of the foreign trade; now, we receive very little from Spain, while Germany is a large buyer of our imports. The fine sorts grown there find their way into the west of England, where they are converted into "superfine black cloth." Great care is employed in getting up the clip; and certainly the result is such as to do credit to those princely sheep farmers whose wide domains form some of the best land in Silesia and Saxony. It may be worth mentioning, in explanation of the diminishing quantity of German wool, that the land is gradually being turned to cultiva- |

The other countries exporting wool do not merit particular attention. They are chiefly Buenos Ayres, Russia, Barbary, Turkey, Egypt, and Italy.

With regard to the quantity grown in the British Isles, it is difficult to arrive at any very recent or accurate returns. The entire produce in 1800, was estimated at 384,000 packs of 240 pounds each; in 1846, Mr. M'Culloch came to the conclusion that it was about 540,000 packs; while in 1851, it was considered to be about 820,000 packs. Upwards of one-half of this quantity is consumed in the worsted factories of Bradford and the neighbourhood. During the last forty years a material increase has taken place, both in the weight and character of the fleece; but to those who are accustomed to Australian and other fine wools, the contrast in the quality is very marked. Little attention is bestowed either upon the sorting or packing on the part of the farmers. Bermond. sey has long been the home of this branch of the trade.

As an illustration of the vast extent of the woollen industry, we may mention that in 1849, according to official accounts, there were 1,306 woollen, and 493 worsted, factories in Great Britain, employing upwards of 150,000 hands, and indirectly supporting about half a million of individuals. Since that date, the number of mills has considerably increased.

BESSEMER'S PATENT.

Is an unguarded moment we allowed an ironmaker to express in our January number some doubts of the success of Mr. Bessemer's patent plan for making malleable iron. Our correspondent delivered his opinions in courteous language, and his communication appeared to be suitable for our fragmentary gleanings. By a casualty, we ascertained that he had drawn upon himself, and, what is more to be regretted, upon ourselves, the ire of the Engineer-a large, and, we say it with sorrow of our implacable critic, an apparently well-conducted journal of mechanical science-because he doubted the possibility of making good, tough, malleable iron by Mr. Bessemer's patent. Science, according to the Engineer, is something out of our walk; and we have no objection to the statement, if the scientific will be good enough not to endanger our life or limbs. It appears, however, that the Bessemerian system is apt to produce brittle iron, liable to snap in an axle, when common people are in a carriage, and go far to decompose them in a very unscientific manner. If any security of a valid character can be obtained that the Bessemer iron will only break while conveying engineers and scientific individuals, we shall not allow any person, in our columns, to hazard a doubt upon its fitness for that particular work. Until then, we may add to the heresies of our contributor this endorsement, that, with some little knowledge of iron-making, we shared his doubts and fears, and they are not removed. Since the date of our publication several trials of the Bessemer iron have been made in Glasgow and other places, and the sues, so far as they have been published, have been unfavourable. Other persons may have tried this production with more propitious results; and We are not prepared to say that the patent will not succeed, but that its vast importance requires careful examination of its productions. correspondent sends us the following letter on the subject, too late, as he will observe from the date, for our last number :

January 31st, 1857.

A

B-My attention was called to an article in TAIT'S MAGAZINE for the present month, on which I beg to offer a few remarks. It is entitled "Bessemer's Patent may be a Failure," and the writer says he was engaged twenty years in the iron business. If so, he ought not to make such a mistake as to say that pig-iron slowly cooled will become tagh. It is, on the contrary, exccasively brittle.

He remarks, besides, that "these principles of practice will not apply to Mr. Bessemer's patent." So far from this being the case, I myself have seen a mass of Mr. Bessemer's mered almost like a piece of lead, which certainly could no iron, just after casting, and still red hot, notched and hammore be done with cast iron, either hot or cold, than with a piece of glass. The writer seems to consider cast and wrought iron and steel to be identical in composition, totally overlooking the carbon, which, by its absence or presence constitutes the whole difference between them, and which a very slight knowledge of chemistry would have shown him to be the case.

I cannot better show that he has been mistaken in his views of Mr. Bessemer's process, than by comparing it with the old one, which is essentially as follows. Ordinary cast iron consists of iron with a certain per centage of carbon.

This is placed in a furnace, so made that the flames and heated air pass over the surface of the melted metal, which is kept constantly stirred. By this means the greater part of the carbon is burnt off. The mass then becomes very infusible. It is collected into masses weighing not more than 1 cwt., and submitted to the hammer. It then becomes possessed of great toughness, and is called wrought iron.

To form steel, bars of this iron are heated with charcoal

powder in iron boxes, by which means it absorbs a certain

quantity of carbon, intermediate between what it possessed as cast and wrought iron. It is then rather more fusible, and capable of being tempered. The description of Mr.

Bessemer's process given by the writer of the article I refer to, is as follows:

"He has a receiver for the liquid iron as obtained from the ironstone, and he supplies a blast which produces a violent motion of the metal, which afterwards is considered

iron or steel."

This explanation is, in fact, ridiculous. The real process is as follows:

The melted pig-iron is poured in a quantity of about 7 cwt., into a vessel of fireclay, and a blast of air is made to bubble through the melted metal, the carbon contained in which combines with the oxygen of the air, forming carbonic oxide and carbonic acid, which carry off in the form of froth all the impurities or slag. The heat formed in the combination is sufficient to retain the mass in a state of In the course of fusion, without a particle of extra fuel. moved to transform the cast iron into steel, without the preabout a quarter of an hour, sufficient carbon has been revious preparation of wrought iron, as in the old process. If the blast be continued another fifteen minutes or so, the whole of the carbon is removed, and the mass becomes pure malleable iron, which is then poured into an ingot mould. To give it the property of toughness it must be rolled or hammered.

This process, which overcomes all the labour, time, and fuel of puddling, is thus shown to be as simple as possible; and, so far from requiring the management of a skilful chemist, the only point which requires attention is the proper

regulation of the blast.

Iron prepared by the puddling process contains small portions of oxide of iron and slag diffused through it; and the

hammering and rolling processes derive part of their importance from the fact of their expelling these. Mr. Bessemer's iron, on the contrary, is perfectly homogeneous and pure, and only requires rolling to produce the fibrous state, which is the only cause of toughness.

I think it would only be acting up to your motto-Fiat Justitia, to give your readers the substance of my letter, that they may see a little on both sides of the question. It is quite impartial; as I have no connection with Mr. Bessemer,

nor any interest in the iron trade.

I remain, Sir, your obedient servant,

A CHEMIST.

This letter only shows the bitterness infused into masses of iron in a state of fusion, when considered scientifically. Our original correspondent described the Bessemer process in three lines three words. Our subsequent correspondent says that the explanation is ridiculous, and he narrates the process in fifteen lines one word. The performances are before our readers, and it would appear to us that the three lines form a very correct abridgement of the fifteen, and not done in malice. All parties seem to agree that the fibrous condition of iron is the cause of its toughness, and that this is produced by the hammering or rolling to which it is subjected. The Engineer describes Mr. Bessemer's plans for hammering as something very like rolling in its results, for the iron is hammered in a groove, thus giving the fibre a longitudinal direction, without the lateral cross purposes of ordinary beating.

We are not certain that this is any improvement; but the system will be fairly tried by its supporters, and if Mr. Bessemer has succeeded in rendering the process of puddling unnecessary he will have saved a vast amount of fuel and of labour. At present the success of the plan is not proved.

CAMPHOR AND STRYCHNINE.

Two or three cases of death by poison in the form of strychnine have been reported in the newspapers during the past month. The strychnine is sold, under the name of a vermin destroyer, by grocers, in paper packages; and if by accident one of the said paper packages should break, and the contents get into a sugar drawer, some persons may be poisoned accidentally, and others hanged on the charge of poisoning them designedly. One journalist proposes that the vermin killing powder should be only sold in tin packages. It should neither be sold in paper nor tin packages in ordinary places of business. All poisons should be sold by apothecaries only, and under very stringent regulations. The present session of Parliament should not be prorogued until a plain and short, but useful, bill has passed on this subject. Dr. Wilson, a medical gentleman, writing to the Times, mentions camphor as a cure for strychnine-taken internally, in the usual manner, or, even after locked jaw has commenced, by injections, accompanied by camphor baths. This antidote is nearly as common as the perverse ingenuity of men can

render strychnine, and, therefore we record the statement, which is supported by references to two cases. The poison has been considered hitherto desperate, and any of the chemists employed usually by Government might tell the world whether camphor possesses this neutralising power. We do not believe in the existence of any poison that cannot be neutralised by opposing productions; and the profession have not exhibited that industrious research that might have been expected among many thousand learned men, in leaving their patients no chance whatever in many cases, except the stomach-pump.

WEALTH AMONG THE POETS

A rare thing has occurred to the poets, or to some of them,-an outpouring of wealth in the form of a legacy; but, it may be presumed, that riches in these instances will not interfere with the rhyming propensities of the recipients. It was said that the entire property of the late John Kenyon, Esq., Wimbledon, had been devised to literary circles. The following list contains, we believe, the leading bequests; and although large sums are given to persons very well known in literary circles, yet they have not monopolised the goodwill of the deceased gentleman:

Elizabeth Barrett Browning...
Her husband, R. Browning
B. W. Proctor (Barry Cornwall)
Dr. Henry Southey

...

£4,000

6,000

6,500

8,000

and a great deal more. It may be proper therefore, to say that we have more faith in one part of the subject than many of our correspondents. We cannot insert many of the letters and remonstrances which we have received on dreams and spirits; and we do not intend to iusert comments and confirmations of a different description; but we allow one correspondent to put certain questions; with a fearful foreboding of fate, next month, in a deluge of letters from mesmerists and phrenologists-to say nothing of palmerists and physiognomists:

SIR,-I have been much (but not agreeably) surprised to find in recent numbers of your excellent Magazine, grave attempts to revive exorcised spirits and to administer a restorative to moribund and all but defunct mesmerism. At the imminent risk of being charged with unseasonable incredulity, stupid bigotry, and-towards those who, like the writer of the articles in question, differ from me, with illiberality-I beg leave to enter my very decided protest against such views, and against the so-called facts on which such views are founded, and especially against their favourable receptionwithout any accompanying contradiction-in the columns of "TAIT'S MAGAZINE." In all fairness, I respectfully (and for the benefit of your many readers, whose opinions you are mainly assisting to form) claim a small space, if only to ask two or three questions-which questions duty, and that responsibility which we all feel for each other's welfare, impel me to ask, and candour and justice seem to require you to give insertion to, without reference to your ability or inability to answer them.

First, why refer to any proofs of an immaterial or spiritual essence, and of electrical agency as a possible medium for the instantaneous transmission of such essence, unless you grant that such reference is found absolutely indispensible to show that such ghostly visits may possibly and probably be be paid-unless, in fact, it be granted that the believer in, or narrator of, ghost stories, must first make out a reasonably fair claim to be heard, by showing that a human being has a bodily and a spiritual existence, and that the latter may, and does, retain "the form and pressure," even, as well as the consciousness and intelligence of the actual being, after the former has ceased to live? Nay, does such a reference not unequivocally imply that, as a matter of course, the non-existence in us of a spirit, or soul, or immaterial essence, would be fatal to the ghost story? But if our possession, in this life, of a soul, or spirit, be so obviously necessary, in order that any one deceased may, as a ghost, visit his survivors, how comes it to pass that breeches, and boots, and hats, coats, and waistcoats, with which the alleged spiritual visitors are clad, can come under some different law? Now, without levity, without quibbling or sophistry, let me seriously ask youif Lord Tyrone did not obtrude on Lady Beresford's privacy in a condition offensive to modesty-what were his habiliments ? Were they material or

So,

159

spiritual? And which of the horns of this dilemma wounds least? Surely they were not material! And if not, whence came they? Have coats and boots separable and separate spiritual essences? If not then, can gross materials, without any ghostly constituent or accompaniment, put on a ghostly appearance? And if this be ceded to a coat and unmentionables, then why not to a human body? In what an inextricable mesh-work must any one be entangled-and justly and righteously I think who fails to see, and refuses to admit, the one and only rational and scriptural explanation of such ghostly visitors-viz., that hats and hoods, cloaks, coats, and boots-not more nor yet less than the ghost-are but the figments of a disturbed nervous system—of a brain disordered, either by mental causes, or by a congested liver, or deranged stomach-or, in some cases, simply of a morbidly affected retina? Prove, in every case, that no one of these conditions had anything whatever to do with the "apparition," and then, soon as you like, you set to work, in right good earnest, to detect a practical joke, or to discover some natural and physical, and, it may be, a remarkable pheno

menon.

a

The allusion, in the same article, to mesmerism, as to something bolstering up ghost stories, provokes or evokes a question or two which I cannot withhold. How rampant was so-called clairvoyance at one time!-and how perfectly identified with mesmerism, too! Was there once any admitted difference? Was not "clairvoyance" merely higher manifestation" of mesmerism, of which it was at once the perfection and the proof? Where was clairvoyance during the late war? What would not the daily press, and the wealthy friends of our belligerent countrymen in the Crimea, have given to have had in their service such a superhuman power as mesmerists for long pretended to possess and wield? Can we suppose that mesmerists were, one and all, so utterly careless of money, so destitute of humanity, or so devoid of common shrewdness and enterprise, that they never essayed to give us daily and hourly news from the East? In the face of our submarine telegraphs, existing and preparing, shall we not rightfully denounce either mesmerists in this matter to be nincompoops, or mesmerism (or, at all events, its "higher manifestation") to be a delusion? But take away this "second sight" from mesmerisin, and what have we left? Beyond putting people into a state of insensibility to physical suffering-which "manifestation" we shall glance at just now-what powers did mesmerists claim to have discovered and exerted, besides clairvoyance, so-called, that do not require us, for proof, to rely on their own unsupported statements, their intelligence, and veracity-as, for example, in their insensibility and their catalepsy, in the imitation of our Lord's miraculous change of water into wine? The unsupported testimony of believers in mesmerism, as proof of their allegations, we obviously cannot, and must not, admit-or else all