the less honourable use of mending roads, without their metalliferous qualities having been discovered. I may here be allowed to capitulate very briefly the progress of the iron-smelting of this country to the present time. The sources from which our chief supply of iron had been procured from very early periods down to the middle of the last century were the hæmatites of Gloucestershire, South Wales, the Mendip Hills, and the iron-stones of Kent and the Weald of Sussex; the coal-measures of Salop, Lancashire, Yorkshire, and Scotland. Some of these ores are believed on good grounds to have been worked by the Romans, the fuel generally, but perhaps not exclusively, used in the process of smelting being charcoal. This material, however, became gradually scarce, and some of the writers of the last century lament the rapid destruction of the forests both of the South of England and the Midland counties, owing to the using up of the trees.* Necessity is the mother of invention, and as the requirements of iron became more extended, and the supply of charcoal diminished, it became necessary to try some other fuel. There is, as is common in such cases, some uncertainty to whom the honour belongs of having first successfully employed coal for this purpose, but it is generally admitted that Dud Dudley, after several failures, was the first to succeed in the attempt. The wasteful consumption of this valuable mineral in the process of smelting was at first enormous, but as the process began to be more generally adopted, as improvements took place in the formation of the furnaces, the use of the hot blast and other appliances were introduced, the proportion of coal employed became gradually less, down to the present day, when it may be said to have nearly reached its minimum. The black-band and clay-band iron-stones of the coal-measures have hitherto been our chief sources of supply. These ores occur in thin layers associated with coal-seams, shales, clays, and sandstones. A few years since, however, the rich hæmatites of North Lancashire and West Cumberland were opened up, and are now very largely used, both for mixing with the former and for the manufacture of the finest pig-iron directly from the ores themselves. From this iron only Bessemer steel is at present made. The ore occurs in enormous "pockets," or irregular masses, filling chambers in the carboniferous limestone, and often only covered by a few feet of drift clay or millstone grit, while in one or two places it is quarried in open-work. Meanwhile, the process of exhaustion of the coalmeasure iron-stones in some of the principal centres of manufacture was going on apace, and it must be confessed that now the local resources of Staffordshire, Shropshire (Coalbrook Dale), and the * I am informed by Mr. W. Brockbank that there are still two or three places in Great Britain where charcoal is used in smelting under peculiar circumstances, and for the production of a very high class of pig-iron. . Glasgow districts are rapidly diminishing, while every year the demand for iron is increasing. How this demand was to be met, without drawing largely on the resources of foreign countries, is a problem which received its solution just at the time when it began to occupy men's minds. The solution was the discovery of those "New Iron-fields of England" which occupy a broad belt of country traversing our island almost from the shores of the English Channel to those of the German Ocean. This belt is formed of a range of hills with scarped ridges, and longitudinal valleys, rising to the eastward above the plains of the central counties. In this range are included geologically the Cleveland Hills of Yorkshire and the Cotteswold Hills of Gloucester and Somerset; but it must not be supposed that the strata are equally rich in iron all along the entire range, although the representative formations in which the iron occurs may be present throughout. This range at several points both in Yorkshire and Gloucestershire reaches elevations exceeding one thousand feet above the sea, and terminates in the coast-cliffs of Saltburn on the north, and those of Lyme Regis on the south. It is composed of Jurassic formations, or speaking more definitely, the upper members of the Lias and the lower members of the Oolite series. From the base of the range the Lower Lias and New Red Marl stretch away in slightly undulating plains towards the west, and with some slight modifications the general succession of the strata, and the form of the hills as they occur in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Gloucestershire, and Somersetshire, may be expressed as in the following diagramatic section.† FIG. 1.-DIAGRAMATIC SECTION, TO ILLUSTRATE THE POSITION OF THE LIASSIC Red Marl. (a) Lower Lias. a (d) Lower Oolite. There are two positions in the above section where the ironstones occur, the lower being at the top of the Middle Lias, or Marlstone, the upper at the base of the Great Oolite. This latter, however, is almost exclusively confined to Northamptonshire, and by far the most important member is the Middle Lias iron-stone of the counties of York, Lincoln, and Oxford. The range also touches the counties of Rutland, Leicester, and Warwick, in all of which "Jurassic "- a good term-taken from the Jura range on the borders of France and Switzerland, whereby to include the Liassic and Oolitic formations under one name. †The main difference is, that in Yorkshire the Great Oolite rests on the Upper Lias, in Gloucestershire it is replaced by the Inferior Oolite. iron-stone occurs, but it is as yet unrecognized, practically at least, in the Coteswold Hills and in Somersetshire. The iron-stone is the upper member of the Marlstone, or Middle Lias formation, the lower consisting of sandy shales, or fine laminated sands with bands or nodules of iron-stone. Where the upper member ceases to be sufficiently rich in iron to be deemed an ironstone, it occurs in the form of a hard calcareous grit, generally very full of its characteristic fossils, such as: Rhynchonella tetrahedra, R. variabilis, Terebratula punctata, Pecten æquivalvis, Nautilus truncatus, Ammonites margaritatus, and A. spinatus. As it is overlain directly by the soft shales of the Upper Lias (or "alum shale"), these in the process of denudation have often been washed away, leaving platforms of the rock projecting from the flanks of the range, or forming isolated flat-topped hills rising above the general surface of the country. Oxenton Hill in Gloucestershire is a good illustration of the latter case; and the section above (Fig. 1) represents the former. FIG. 2-A GLOUCESTERSHIRE HILL, In the above figure the upper conical portion of the hill is composed of Upper Lias, capped by Oolite, the platform on which it rests being Marlstone, or Middle Lias. The oolitic iron-stone of Northamptonshire, and a few other places, belongs to the lower portion of the Great Oolite, called by the Geologists of the Government Survey "the Northampton Sands," and is very irregular in its distribution, although occupying on the whole a large tract of country. These sands rest directly on the Upper Lias Clay, and are overlaid by the white limestones which form the upper member of the Great Oolite. The iron-stone is found in irregular beds, sometimes reaching a thickness of twelve or fourteen feet, and within a mile or two thinning away altogether. There is a remarkable instance of this near Blisworth, for the ironstone, which occurs plentifully at the northern side of the railway tunnel, disappears altogether at the southern end. The ore is a hydrated oxide of a rich rusty-brown colour, of high specific gravity, and silicious. When reached at some distance underground, where it has been protected from atmospheric influences, the colour is found to be olive-green, but these portions are generally rejected by the quarrymen. It is extensively worked at Blisworth, Gayton, Glendon, Maidford, Wellingborough, and Duston. In all, there are about thirteen quarries and four furnaces in blast in Northamptonshire, besides which, large quantities of the stone are sent by * See memoirs 'On the Geology of Parts of Northamptonshire,' by Mr. W. T. Aveline, F.G.S. canal and rail into South Staffordshire, and even South Wales. The quantity of ore raised in 1864 was 335,787 tons, of the value of 84,7617. The furnaces are situated at Wellingborough and Weedon. Having thus described the geological position of both the Oolitic and Liassic iron-stones, and also the special characters and districts where the former of these occurs, we shall now return to the consideration of the latter and more important source of supply from the New Iron-fields, and trace its course from Yorkshire in the north to Oxfordshire in the south. The Cleveland Hills, the cradle of the new iron trade, form a range of very picturesque hills, terminating northward in a line of escarpment, ranging along the valley of the Tees and in lofty cliffs lining the coast of the German Ocean from Saltburn to Whitby. Inland, the escarpment bends round to the southward, opposite Middlesborough, and stretches in an indented line to the banks of the Humber, near Hull. The northern portion of the hills is intersected by deep valleys, some entering from the coast, as those of Skelton Beck, Kilton Brook, Easington, and Rondsley Brooks. Others enter from the land side, as those of Guisborough and Kildale. The summits of the ridges between these valleys are capped by Great Oolite, below which is the Upper Lias shale, forming the upper slopes down to the Marlstone, or iron-stone bed, which juts out along the flanks of the valleys about half-way from the bottom. The importance of these valleys in laying bare the outcrop of the iron-stone, and allowing it to be extensively worked without the labour and cost of mining, will be readily appreciated. Already, numerous tramways and branch lines connecting the mines with the North Yorkshire, Cleveland, and Stockton and Darlington Railways, as well as with special smelting-furnaces, have been constructed. Like the Cotteswold Hills, in Gloucestershire, the Cleveland Hills may be regarded as an elevated table-land, so deeply indented and cut up by valleys, that its original form is almost obliterated, and it now presents the appearance of an assemblage of ridges and ramifying valleys, with little appearance of order or system in their arrangement. This, however, is only apparent, as the upper surface of the ridges corresponds to an imaginary plane sloping gently towards the south-east. The general vertical section of the formations as they occur near Saltburn is as follows: MIDDLE LIAS, OR MARLSTONE 1. Nodular Iron-stone, with a thin band LOWER LIAS of Iron Pyrites 2. Solid greyish-green Iron-stone 3. Sandy and rusty Shales 4. Second bed of Iron-stone, resembling "clay-band," with 30 per cent. of Iron 5. Sandy Shales and Sandstone Blue Shales and Clay 30 150 The upper bed of iron-stone is alone worked, and this is done either by mining from adits driven into the sides of the hills, or by open-work, as at Hob Hill Quarries. It is of a greyish-green colour, finely oolitic in structure, and weathers into rusty concretionary bands and nodules. Some of the mines are on a very extensive scale. At Eston and Up-Leatham mines, the iron-stone rock dips into the hill from the outcrop at 1 in 15, becomes horizontal under the central part, and rises again to its outcrop at a distance of several miles to the southward in the valley of Guisborough. The mode of working is by galleries six yards wide, walls being left of equal width to support the roof, until the whole of the property is opened up, when these will be recovered by working backwards. A thorough system of drainage and ventilation is established, and the stone is drawn up in trucks to the mouth of the adits by stationary engines, and tipped over into the wagons of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, in which it is carried direct to the furnaces. In general, it is considered that three tons of the raw ore produce one ton of pig-iron. The following are the proportions of fuel, flux, and stone in use at the works of Mr. B. Samuelson, M.P., in 1864, since which time the proportions of fuel have been considerably reduced : 3 tons of raw ore, or 2 tons 8 cwts. calcined ore 12 cwt. limestone : : one ton of grey forge pig. The banks of the Tees, which are nearly flat for some distance from the river, and then rise with a gradually-increasing slope to the base of the Cleveland Hills, form an admirable site for the erection of smelting works and forges on the largest scale. Along the southern shore the Stockton and Darlington Railway has been carried to Saltburn, and in one direction serves to supply the ore, and in the other the fuel from the Durham coal-field. No one can drive along this line from Redcar to Stockton, and pass in succession the Titanic works which have been erected and are still rising along its course, without being impressed with the prodigious energy displayed by the iron-masters of this district; for it is to be remembered that the whole of these works have sprung into existence within the last sixteen years. Middlesborough is the metropolis of this trade, and the chief port for the shipment of the iron, both in its raw and manufactured states. Other smelting and manufacturing works are also erected on the northern shore of the Tees, and in 1865 the whole district comprised 105 furnaces in blast, smelting very nearly one million tons of pig-iron. The Cleveland iron-stone becomes thinner, and is leaner towards the south, but as the quality of the iron is good, it is extensively worked in the valley of the Esk, near Whitby, the new line from |