The Iron and steel magazine . an hour to in-quiring into the obso-lete practices of theirearliest predecessors,and to casting a glancebackwards to the be-ginnfngs of the great industry with wdiich they are all so intimatelyconnected. The subject of the early use of iron has alreadybeen ably dealt with in papers read before the PhilosophicalSociety of Glasgow, by St. John Vincent Day in 1871, and byProf. A. Humboldt Sexton in 1900. Since the publication ofthese papers, however, much fresh light has been thrown on thesubject by numerous archeological and literary researches. Ipropose, therefore,
The Iron and steel magazine . an hour to in-quiring into the obso-lete practices of theirearliest predecessors,and to casting a glancebackwards to the be-ginnfngs of the great industry with wdiich they are all so intimatelyconnected. The subject of the early use of iron has alreadybeen ably dealt with in papers read before the PhilosophicalSociety of Glasgow, by St. John Vincent Day in 1871, and byProf. A. Humboldt Sexton in 1900. Since the publication ofthese papers, however, much fresh light has been thrown on thesubject by numerous archeological and literary researches. Ipropose, therefore, to give a brief summary of the results of theseresearches, and to set forth, as fully as possible in the time avail-able, the existing knowledge of the metallurgy of iron and steelprior to the introduction of the blast furnace. The date of the discovery of iron has long been a matter of controversy, and it is generally believed that the iron first used * Lecture delivered before the West of Scotland Iron and Steel 4i8 The Iron and Steel Magazine by man was of meteoric origin. In support of this view Mr. OttoVogel has given quotations from the earliest Finnish poem; andSir Henry Bessemer in 1895 adduced evidence to show that thetools used in the construction of the Pyramids must have beenmade of a meteoric nickel-alloy iron. The theory is, however,open to considerable doubt, in view of the difficulty of workingmeteoric iron. Indeed, many authorities have denied thatmeteoric iron is malleable. The hypothesis is, nevertheless, anattractive one. Blocks of meteoric iron, though not verynumerous, have been found in all parts of the world. TheBritish Museum collection, which includes specimens of nearlyall the meteoric irons known, numbers 229, one of which fell inGreat Britain, at Rowton, Shropshire, on April 20, 1876. Themost remarkable of the larger masses was found in West Green-land, whence it was transported in 1894 by Capt. R. E. Pearyto the American Natu
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