says, "The greatest produce in iron per furnace with the
Black Band and cold blast never exceeded 60 tons a-week. The produce
per furnace now averages 90 tons a-week. Ten tons of this I attribute
to the use of raw pit-coal, and the other twenty tons to the use of hot
blast." [Papers on Iron and Steel, 127.] The produce per furnace is
now 200 tons a-week and upwards. The hot blast process was afterwards
applied to the making of iron with the anthracite or stone coal of
Wales; for which a patent was taken out by George Crane in 1836.
Before the hot blast was introduced, anthracite coal would not act as
fuel in the blast-furnace. When put in, it merely had the effect of
putting the fire out. With the aid of the hot blast, however, it now
proves to be a most valuable fuel in smelting.

[6] It is stated in the North British Review for Nov. 1845, that "As in
Scotland every furnace--with the exception of one at Carron--now uses
the hot blast the saving on our present produce of 400,000 tons of
pig-iron is 2,000,000 tons of coals, 200,000 tons of limestone, and
#650,000 sterling per annum." But as the Scotch produce is now above a
million tons of pig-iron a year, the above figures will have to be
multiplied by 2 1/2 to give the present annual savings.

[7] Papers read by Mr. Ralph Moore, Mining Engineer, Glasgow, before
the Royal Scottish Society of Arts, Edin. 1861, pp. 13, 14.

CHAPTER X.

MECHANICAL INVENTIONS AND INVENTORS.

"L'invention nest-elle pas la poesie de la science? . . . Toutes les
grandes decouvertes portent avec elles la trace ineffacable d'une
pensee poetique. Il faut etre poete pour creer. Aussi, sommes-nous
convaincus que si les puissantes machines, veritable source de la
production et de l'industrie de nos jours, doivent recevoir des
modifications radicales, ce sera a des hommes d'imagination, et non
point a dea hommes purement speciaux, que l'on devra cette
transformation."--E. M. BATAILLE, Traite des Machines a Vapeur.

Tools have played a highly important part in the history of
civilization. Without tools and the ability to use them, man were
indeed but a "poor, bare, forked animal,"--worse clothed than the
birds, worse housed than the beaver, worse fed than the jackal. "Weak
in himself," says Carlyle, "and of small stature, he stands on a basis,
at most for the flattest-soled, of some half square foot, insecurely
enough; has to straddle out his legs, Jest the very wind supplan