or peat, in the first instance, may be
manufactured on the bogs into peat charcoal,
as is now being done in many places. As an
article of commerce, peat charcoal is of much
greater importance than peat fuel, and in this
form, if in no other, the large cheques lying
idle in the shape of Irish peat bogs may very
conveniently be cashed. That fact it is just
now our design to illustrate.

Iron is made in England with pit coal, in
the form of coke. Wood charcoal would be
infinitely better, but is much too dear; peat
charcoal, for the smelting and manufacture of
metals, is equal in every respect to the charcoal
got from wood, and can be supplied at a
much smaller cost. For the finest kind of
iron, it is almost requisite that charcoal, and
not coke, be emploj'ed in the manufacture, and
the use in this way of peat charcoal, is no
novelty. Afc Ichoux, in the department of
the Landes, in France; at Wadenhammer,
and Wachter-Neunhammer, in Germany; at
Ransko, in Bohemia; at Königsbrunn, in
Bavaria, and elsewhere, peat charcoal is
commonly employed. The conversion of Irish
bog into peat charcoal, is not unlikely to
develope in the sister country mineral
resources to an extent not even at this moment
anticipated. Formerly, peat was used
extensively in manufacturing the iron exported
from Ireland into England. In England,
wood had been used; our iron-works, as
those in Sussex, being located in the
middle of our forests; but the exhaustion of
our woods led to a demand for Irish metal.
The discovery that coke would suit our
purpose well enough, checked suddenly the Irish
trade, and about a hundred years ago the last
charcoal furnace was extinguished in the
county Kerry. It is after the lapse of a
hundred years in this very county Kerry,
that the charcoal-making is resumed by the
Peat-working Company.

Ireland still contains some of the richest
iron ores in Europe, and copper is found in
considerable quantities in Wicklow, Waterford,
and the northern part of Cork. The
lead and silver of county Clare and the Wicklow
gold mines, have long had a fabulous
reputation; and it is well known that in several
parts of Ireland valuable mineral products
have turned up under the superintendence of
new proprietors of estates, formerly neglected
by embarrassed men. To work the mineral
resources of the country, three millions of
acres of the best kind of fuel are provided.

Our continental friends lately exhibited
among us many specimens of charcoal-iron in
the form of guns and muskets; the Government
factory of Wurtemburg, among others,
Dandoy and Co., of Mauberge, in France, and
some of the smaller German States. The
Belgian Government exhibited, through the
director of the Royal Cannon Foundry, some
iron guns by which our Committee on
Ordnance might be edified. An English iron
gun, after three hundred rounds, requires
reventing, and with reventing, the entire
machine will last through not more than a
thousand rounds. The Belgians, however,
let us look at a revented gun, out of which
there had been fired six thousand rounds,
and at another gun which had not yet needed
reventing, and the vent of which was still
but little altered, although they had fired
it two thousand one hundred and eighteen
times.

Three tons of coke make one ton of
pig-iron, thirty hundred-weight of charcoal make
a ton of the finest charcoal-iron. Iron-masters
working for our Ordnance use pitcoal,
though it is well known that charcoal
will produce three times the amount of
carbonisation, and, therefore, of elasticity and
tenacity, the properties required for the securing
of a good metallic result. When Belgium
separated from Holland, in 1830, General
Paixhans, of the French Artillery, was sent
to assist the Belgians in the siege of Antwerp.
In company with General Busen, he
reconnoitred the citadel, and found it to be a place
of extraordinary strength. Every point was
well sheltered from the effects of shells, and
there was, moreover, a big ditch which could
be filled with water from the sea. The French
general proposed then to King Leopold to
shorten the siege by means of a mortar, of
which the shells would weigh a thousand
pounds, and contain each a hundred pounds
of powder. This, it was thought, would with a
few blows decide the struggle, and cut short
the pains and miseries of a protracted siege.
The proposal was believed to be inhuman, and
it was not until after fifty thousand cannon
balls.and shells had been spent in vain upon
the city, that the monster mortar—a charcoal
casting made at Liege—was brought out.
Nine shells were fired, huge flying mines, one
of which burst in the air, and eight descended
in the citadel. Two days after the first shell
was fired the Dutch surrendered.

A mortar capable of propelling with any
certainty a shell of such dimensions, or
capable, indeed, of being fired with any safety
to its owners, must have been manufactured
with the utmost nicety. Charcoal
of wood or peat must necessarily have
been used in the manufacture, not only
because by that means a tougher and more
elastic metal is obtained, but because, from the
absence of sulphur in charcoal, flaws in the
metal are avoided. From the use of pit-coal
iron, which creates a risk of flaws, lamentable
accidents have sometimes resulted. Without
the finer descriptions of steel and iron which
we import from the north of Europe and the
South of Asia, from the neighbourhoods of the
Pole and the Equator, Sheffield cutlery would
not so well sustain its reputation. French,
Prussians, and Bavarians, employ peat
charcoal: and peat charcoal is offered to us now
by A, B, C, and D, by sundry workers who
already have begun to settle on the bogs of
Ireland.