Part I. Report of progress in 1869, by J. S. Newberry, chief geologist. Part II. Report of progress in the second district, by E. B. Andrews, assist. geologist. Part III. Report on geology of Montgomery County, by Edward Orton, assist. geologist.

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periment was first tried by drawing a ladle of molten iron from the fur
nace, and stirring into it a quantity of iron ore. The change anticipated
began ~it once, and the iron assumed a pasty condition, which rendered
it impossible to stir it with a bar. Substituting a wooden rod, the materials were mingled and were made to form a ball similar to that collected
in the puddling furnace by the rabble. This ball heated, squeezed and
rolled, was found to furnish a fair article of bar-iron. Subsequently
there was substituted for the ladle a wheel, eighteen feet in diameter,
bearing on its margin a series of boxes. This wheel was made to revolve
beneath a stream of molten iron and pulverized ore that crossed each
other at right angles. By the rotation of the wheel the boxes were
gradually filled with layers of iron mixed with ore. When each contained a sufficient quantity the sides were removed and the blooms transferred to the puddling furnaces, these reheated until the slag they contain was "sweated" out, then squeezed and rolled into bars. These
bars, without piling or re-rolling, are found to exhibit all the-properties
of first class iron. The Ellershausen process has now been in operation
for a year in the establishments of J. H. Shcenberger & Co., and Lyon,
Shorb & Co., in Pittsburg, where it may be witnessed by any who have
a desire to investigate it.
Many other methods besides that of Ellershausen, have been devised
for cheapening the cost of bar-iron; consisting for the most part in
efforts to reduce the time and expense of the laborious and costly process of puddling, as now practiced. Several of these methods promise
well and deserve investigation, but I will only refer to a single one, the
t' Mechanical rabble," a device for performing the ordinary work of a
puddler by machinery. This is now practiced in several foreign establishments, and if it could be made generally successful, would be much
more valuable in America than in Europe, as labor is so much dearer
here than there. After all, it seems to me we should look for the greatest improvement in the manufacture of bar-iron, in a complete change of
the process followed. All these to which I have alluded have been based
upon a supposed necessity of first reducing the ore to the form of pigiron, and then, by a second manipulation, obtaining malleable iron from
this by eliminating the four or five per cent. of carbon which cast iron
contains. But it is possible to produce malleable iron direct from the
ore. This is called, by metallurgists, the " direct process," because it
follows a direct line and avoids the roundabout through the blast furnace.
This is the method practiced in what is called the Catalan Forge; and
many thousand tons of iron are annually manufactured by this forge in
America and elsewhere, but by no plan yet devised, has iron been made
more cheaply by this direct way than by the other. It is, however, by
no means certain that the limit of possibility in this direction has been