Page images
PDF
EPUB
[ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

BESSEMER'S PATENT.

In an unguarded moment we allowed an iron maker 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 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 issues, 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 a 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:

any

January 31st, 1857.

A

SIR,-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 tough. It is, on the contrary, exccзsively 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 iron, just after casting, and still red hot, notched and hammered almost like a piece of lead, which certainly could no more 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 fusion, without a particle of extra fuel.

In the course of 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

[blocks in formation]

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

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

£4,000 6,000

[ocr errors]

6,500 8,000

250

Catherine Southey (daughter of the late Robert Southey

...

John Forster, George Scharf, and Antonio Panizzi, each 500, in addition to his stock of wines...

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

1,500

400

[ocr errors]

20,000 5,000

W. S. Landor, Henry Chorley, Mrs. Jameson, and Sir Charles Fellowes, £100 each Thomas Hawthorne, an executor ... James Booth, ditto. His library, furniture, and collection of articles of vertu at Wimbledon, to Miss Bailey and Mr. Booth The London University Hospital...

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

5,000

Mr. Kenyons will contains many other legacies to friends and relatives, and the residue of his property after the payment of legacies is to be divided by his executors. The deceased gentleman published some volumes of poetry-two we believe-which failed to attract the attention bestowed on his will; but he was a warm and wealthy friend of literature, and of many persons engaged in its cultivation.

THE LOST SENSE AND THE SPIRITUAL WORLD.

We inserted several papers in the last volume of the magazine under this title. It does not follow that we agreed with the conclusions of the writer of these papers. We are treated, however, by several correspondents as if we had adopted them,

THE LOST SENSE AND THE SPIRITUAL WORLD.

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:

SIB, 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 reception without 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

[ocr errors]

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 so, 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.

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 “a 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 mesmerism, 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

160

on.

THE LOST SENSE AND THE SPIRITUAL WORLD.

ever yet showed to an anatomist any one of the so called " organs" of the brain? Where is the posterior lobe of each cerebral hemisphere in the sheep? and yet, how remarkably does she, in due season, exhibit maternal attachment, even to a display of downright fierceness in one of the most timid natures? By what right does a phrenologist exclude the base of the cerebrum from its shape of organs? Its convolutions are quite as justly entitled to them-or rather, let us say, other convolutions as little so. The truth is, that the base is beyond our scrutiny during life, more so than any other part of the brain's surface, and has simply been overlooked. Could the singular case of most rudimentary cerebellum recorded in Cruveilhier's "Pathological Anatomy" ever have occurred in a disgusting profligate, if the crude and untenable doctrines of Gall and Spurzheim had been correct? Crude, I say, because of the short time taken to dish it up for the public, the small proportionate number of heads examined, the confessedly vitiated state of each head as an index of the original intellectual and moral condition of the individual, through education, association, and circumstances, and the very small number and blind partiality of the enthusiastic originators of this strange, and hitherto most successful, rival of physiognomythat had, in its day, displaced palmistry.

[ocr errors]

Roman Catholic "miracles" must be received, and we should, indeed, have no stopping point; all belief in the stability of natural laws, or in the beneficence, and wisdom, and power of the Supreme Being, would be at an end-for we should then all be delegates and plenipotentiaries together? All that we should then require, would be to matriculate at the Vatican, or take lessons from some mesmerite; after which we might upset each and every natural law, and arrogantly and presumptuously gainsay the creator and upholder of the universe, by transferring a person's sight from the exquisite organ so obviously adapted by Divine Power to some other organ in the utmost possible degree unsuited for seeing-like the hand or the foot; by translating a person spiritually and instantaneously to the diametrically opposite part of the great globe; by getting women to look back, with the vision of the Omnipresent, on the secret past-as in the recent case of the Dublin murder; or by causing water to sicken or intoxicate, at our will and pleasure, any person we please to operate Would this life be desirable or tolerable under such a state of things? Would God be honoured, and our love for Him increased, by our possessing such independence of action? Is not our very abject reliance on His arm, our bond of attachment to Him? Does he not wisely conceal from us the great events, and especially the end, But to return to mesmerism, and its vaunted of life in each case? Is not the very beating or Is not the very beating or agency in putting people into a state of insensibility pulsation of the heart wisely and happily removed to physical suffering. The commonest and most from our control? If we could attain to the same readily induced phenomenon, we are told, is "putmastery over this, the ever acting mainspring, orting people to sleep, during which sleep you may rather force-pump, of our organisation, that we have given to us over the voluntary muscles of our arms and lower limbs-if we could attain to the same knowledge of the termination of our existence that we have of the rising and setting of the sun, or of the commencement and termination of the different seasons, should we be the gainers? Certainly not. These, and many other things, are wisely withheld from us, and in nothing, perhaps, is the sagacity of men more truly tested and demonstrated, than in their endeavours to discriminate between what, in the first place, really may be compassed by finite beings, and that which is absolutely impossible of accomplishment (the philosophers' stone and perpetual motion, although under various names, still, and, I believe, ever will, command a place amongst the objects that attract some active and enterprising men)-and, secondly, in their efforts to distinguish, amongst things incomprehensible by us, those which are above and beyond our highest powers of reason or observation -but which claim, nevertheless, and justly claim, our belief-from such as are incomprehensible to us, because of their being inconsistent with reason, and contradicted by the common observation, during the previous life-time, of each person amongst us. Fortune-telling and witchcraft are not, nor ever will be, wrecked or sunk, so long as phrenology and mesmerism exist. It is but a fresh rigging and repainting of the craft. What phrenologist

pinch or prick the mesmerised person, without his at all feeling it." With due allowance for the acknowledged effects of monotony in every form, mesmerists have here clearly to beg the question

which, of course, no strictly scientific person can grant them. The proof rests only on the testimony of the person under experiment. Other proof, in favour we cannot have; but against it, we have abundant and positive proof-for, I would ask, has the electric telegraph silenced and put to shame the so-called clairvoyants? and has chloroform at operations-at even those common ones of dentistry and obstetricy, not to mention our "capital operations-not completely, before all but themselves, silenced the "hypnotists" and mesmerists? Did we ever hear of accouchments under mesmerism, got through without pain or consciousness, any more than an unmistakeably blind person made to see by clairvoyance? Did we ever know it done anywhere, or by any one? No, Sir: we are-as said the late Professor Gregory-more plagued than enough with false facts, from which, even by right reasoners, false theories may be, and are, deduced. Let us, for a moment, suppose mesmerism really capable, as we know and everywhere find chloroform to be, of allowing midwifery in its severest forms to be practised altogether without pain and consciousness, what are we to infer from the fact of chloroform so thoroughly displacing mesmerism? Does mesmerism kill? Does chlo

OLD FOOD AND OLD TIMES.

roform not occasionally (though rarely) lead to - fatal results? Is mesmerism not cheaper, and more easily carried, and more certain never to run short during an operation? Nothing but a want of faith in mesmerism can account for mesmerists not using it. There is, however, this peculiarity about what the Professor called "false facts"they never hold water; they cannot bear the test of time; and, indeed, after puzzling the refinedly and sophistically educated, they are surely doomed to fall before the verdict of public opinion at lastoften to crumble down most ignominiously before a few plain, stubborn truths, not at first elicited.

Our contributor, we believe, repudiates many things also repudiated by his critics; and a considerable part of the preceding letter has no connection with his articles. Lord Tyrone's garments may have appeared to Lady Beresford in contact with the shadow of the deceased Peer as a necessary means of identification. Our contributor

every

would say that he could not explain these matters, which may be no more contradictory to reason than the appearance of men and things in their day state to a dreamer. It will be just as difficult to explain the appearance of certain objects and certain people in dreams as to do what this correspondent requires; and yet he may have seen such things when "the exquisite organs," of which he speaks, were closed in sleep.

Our correspondent believes, we presume, that dreams have occasionally been fulfilled; but he cannot explain the causes. He might say that many stupid dreams originate with indigestion. Possibly so; yet, how does the over-burthened stomach see? or why has it privileges in a diseased that it does not possess in a healthy state? We only notice that his dilemma is none at all, except

to those who can explain these other mysteries.

It seems doubtful, from this letter, whether the

writer believes in immaterial existences; and yet he refers to Scripture, and believes the Bible, we have no doubt. The circumstance only shows the erroneous tendency of fiery zeal. He is zealous against certain opinions, and in assailing them for gets his own. Those persons who intelligently believe the possibility of events apparently superna. tural, also believe that they are of very rare occurrence, and have no more confidence in clairvoyance

than the writer of the letter.

OLD FOOD AND OLD TIMES.

The Leicestershire Mercury tells as something wonderful, the recollections of an octogenarian in Notts, who says that when he was a boy, his father, a frame-work knitter, upon taking his work to Nottingham, brought a white penny loaf to each of the children, who even amid frost and snow would run three or four miles to meet him, and enjoy their luxury "a little sooner." What, asks the narrator, would the present generation say to

161

that? And what could they say, except that their ancestors consumed more oats and rye, and less wheat than they require? It does not follow that the people lived on worse fare. Without the privileges of octogenarianism we have the same sort of recollections as the patriarch of Epperstone, Notts. We remember that wheaten bread or white bread was deemed a Sabbath luxury, or only used upon grave occasions, such as a tea drinkings among families in ordinary circumstances, upon week days. We have also more clearly defined remembrances of a change in dietary which rendered oaten bread the luxury. At present we prefer it, when prepared skilfully; but we are inPerhaps the most expensive food ever habitually formed that it is rather the dearer of the two! used in a family was Scotch oatmeal, carried from one of our ports to Calcutta, and thence to Delhi! Domestic economy should be intelligible to families, and yet the relative cost of food and the habits common in different districts of the same island are misunderstood in others. One school book, written for the benefit of young people in boarding and fashionable schools, states that the common people of Scotland live on oaten bread, but the higher classes subsist on what they term short bread, savoury and sweet, but heavy for stomachs unaccustomed to its use. As an article

of daily dietary, we agree with the Educationalist supposing short bread to be heavy.

in

crews.

ACCIDENTAL DEATHS.

Last month the loss of life by accidents chiefly occurred at sea, and were consequent, in many cases of ill formed ships and numerically weakened Cheapness is good in many instances, but always bad on the water. The distinguishing calamity of this month has occurred beneath the earth, in a coal pit, at Barnsley, in Yorkshire, where one hundred and seventy individuals have been lost. The explosion of gas in the mine

during the dinner hour, is assigned as the cause of this calamity, which is greater in magnitude than any that has occurred for a long period; but events similar in kind are reported almost weekly. Accidents in mining always fall heavily upon a small district, generally an entire village, and whole families are left without support. The calamity in this instance is aggravated in appearance by the fire which immediately followed the explosion in the pit, and compelled the parties who were consulted to close up its entrances, while one hundred and fifty bodies must have remained in its recesses. The measure was deemed necessary to stop the progress of the flames, and every person who was in the pit during the explosion, must have been dead ere then; yet, as the abandonment of all hope, and the sealing up of a burning grave, the proceeding had a sad and a wild character. All calamities on this scale are followed by slight and

« PreviousContinue »