might be ballasted with Indian iron. The
Indian ores were pronounced, however, by
experienced metallurgists to be unmanageable.
Known processes would not convert them into
marketable steel and iron; but Mr. Heath
was not to be daunted. He went down into
the regions of the unknown, like another
Orpheus, and fetched up into the light all
the new knowledge that was wanted. He
became the founder, in the year 1833, of the
Indian Iron and Steel Company, which was
then simply a private association of
gentlemen at Madras; but was supported by the
local government. The development of this
branch of the resources of India remains still,
however, a great To Be.

Mr. Heath—a young man with a world of
enterprise before him—considered that the
just performance of his duties as a
servant of the Honourable Company was
incompatible with the new life of labour to
which he was called. He resigned his
appointment, and staked all on the result of his
endeavours to beget an iron trade in the East
Indies, and to improve and enlarge the use of
steel and iron in this country. Confident of
great results, he spent his private fortune, and
the produce of the retiring pension allowed
to him by the Company, in traversing, from
Bombay onwards, the whole south-western
coast of India; in visiting all the most
celebrated mines and works in Sweden; in
acquiring a familiar acquaintance with the
processes of iron and steel manufacture; in
verifying old, and in prosecuting new
experiments. After elaborate and costly researches
he found himself at last in London with his
resources utterly exhausted; but with his
object perfectly attained.

In 1839 he took out a patent; and, in the
specification of that patent briefly described the
nature of his inventions, four in number. They
were (and are) all important; but the present
story is concerned only with the last of them;
namely, that for "the use of carburet of man-
ganese in any process for the conversion of
iron into cast-steel."

In the year 1840 Mr. Heath visited Sheffield
for the purpose of introducing, among the
cutlers there, the use of his discovery, so far
as it concerned cast-steel.

Up to this visit of his, no great improvement
had been made in the steel manufacture
for two or three generations. Before Heath's
discovery, it was practically impossible to
produce cast-steel capable of being welded
with any iron except Swedish iron, and some
other of the finest quality. Cutlers were
obliged, therefore, to use in their
manufactures shear steel, produced from bar steel by
an expensive process of manipulation under
a forge hammer. Bar steel is bar iron
carbonised in a converting furnace, and it is
sometimes also called blistered steel from its
external appearance. The fourth head of
Mr. Heath's patent struck out a remedy for
this drawback, and changed the whole aspect
of the Sheffield trade. Dr. Ure in his account
of "Recent Improvements in Art,Manufactures,
and Mines," explains the matter
thus: Mr. Heath, he says, "discovered
that by the introduction of a small portion,
one per cent, and even less of carburet of
manganese into the melting pot, along with
the usual broken bars of blistered steel, a
cast steel was obtained, after fusion, of a
quality very superior to what the bar steel
would have yielded without manganese, and
moreover possessed of the new and peculiar
property of being welded either to itself or
to wrought iron. He also found that a common
bar steel made from an inferior mark or
quality of Swedish or Russian iron would,
when so treated, produce an excellent
caststeel. One immediate consequence of this
discovery has been the reduction of the price
of good steel in the Sheffield market by from
thirty to forty per cent., and likewise the
manufacture of table knives of cast-steel
with iron tangs welded to them; whereas
till Mr. Heath's invention table-knives were
necessarily made of shear steel with unseemly
wavy lines in them, because cast-steel could
not be welded to the tangs." That was
the gist of Mr. Heath's patent, so far as
Sheffield was concerned in it.

How very greatly Sheffield was concerned
in it, a few figures will show. In 1839, before
Heath's patent was known, the Sheffield make
of welding cast steel was not more than fifty
tons a year. In the manufacture of tableknife
blades it was unknown; shear steel
being used for them at the cost of fifty or
sixty pounds a ton. Owing to the discoveries
of Mr. Heath, now, in the year 1853, shear
steel is a neglected article, cast steel the
most perfect form of the metal being
invariably used for cutlery. It costs only from
twenty-five to thirty-five pounds a ton. The
make of welding cast steel which was in 1839
only fifty tons a year is now a hundred
tons a week! Sheffield, ready to show that
it could turn anything into steel, even
contrived to make steel of the conscience of its
Cutlers' Guild.

But how could it do that in spite of Mr.
Heath's patent? As the tale goes on it will
be easy for any one to judge:—When visiting
Sheffield to introduce his invention, Mr. Heath
met with a gentleman who kept a warehouse
for the sale of steel in Sheffield; and who, from
his position in the town, would probably be
able to promote the interests of the patentee
very efficiently. With this gentleman Mr.
Heath dined almost daily; and, during much
personal intercourse, discussed fully his
processes. Finally, he proposed to him an
agency, and suggested practical trials of his
patented method of obtaining cast steel. Mr.
Heath's method, when the patent was first
taken out, had always been to manufacture
carburet of manganese (a substance neither
cheap nor common) for distinct use, and known
as 'Heath's powder' in the steel-works. After