In iron-smelting blast furnaces the waste gases are of considerable
fuel value, and may render important services if properly applied.
Owing to the conditions of the work, which require the maintenance
of a sensibly reducing atmosphere, they contain a very notable
proportion of carbonic oxide, and are drawn off by large wrought iron
tubes near the top of the furnace and conveyed by branch pipes
to the different boilers and air-heating apparatus, which are now
entirely heated by the combustion of such gases, or mixed with air
and exploded in gas engines. Formerly they were allowed to burn
to waste at the mouth of a short chimney place above the furnace
top, forming a huge body of flame, which was one of the most
striking features of the Black Country landscape at night.
Laboratory and Portable Furnaces.—Small air-furnaces with hot plates or sand bath flues were formerly much employed in chemical laboratories, as well as small blast furnaces for crucibles heated with charcoal or coke. The use of such furnaces has very considerably diminished, owing to the general introduction of coal-gas for heating purposes in laboratories, which has been rendered possible by the invention of the Bunsen burner, in which the mixture of air and gas giving the least luminous but most powerfully heating flame is effected automatically by the effluent gas. These burners, or modifications of them, have also been applied to muffle furnaces, which are convenient when only a few assays have to be made—the furnace being a mere clay shell and soon brought to a working temperature; but the fuel is too expensive to allow of their being used habitually or on a large scale. Petroleum, or rather the heavy oils obtained in tar refineries, having an equal or superior heating power to coal-gas, may also be used in laboratories for producing high temperatures. The oil is introduced in a thin stream upon a series of inclined and channelled bars, where it is almost immediately volatilized and burnt by air flowing in through parallel orifices. Furnaces of this kind may be used for melting cast iron or bronze in small quantities, and were employed by H. Sainte Claire Deville in experiments in the metallurgy of the platinum group of metals.
Sefstrom’s blast furnace, used in Sweden for the assay of iron ores, is a convenient form of portable furnace applied to melting in crucibles. It consists of a sheet-iron cylinder about 8 or 9 in. in diameter, within which is fixed one of smaller size lined with fireclay. The space between the two cylinders serves as a heater and distributor for the blast, which is introduced through the nozzle at the bottom, and enters the furnace through a series of several small tuyeres arranged round the inner lining. Charcoal is the fuel used, and the crucibles stand upon the bottom of the clay lining. When a large body of fuel is required, the cylinder can be lengthened by an iron hoop which fits over the top ring. Deville’s portable blast furnace is very similar in principle to the above, but the body of the furnace is formed of a single cast iron cylinder lined with fireclay, closed below by a cast iron plate perforated by a ring of small holes—a hemispherical basin below forming the air-heating chamber.
FURNEAUX, TOBIAS (1735–1781), English navigator, was
born at Swilly near Plymouth on the 21st of August 1735. He
entered the royal navy, and was employed on the French and
African coasts and in the West Indies during the latter part of the
Seven Years’ War (1760–1763). He served as second lieutenant
of the “Dolphin” under Captain Samuel Wallis on the latter’s
voyage round the globe (August 1766–May 1768); was made
a commander in November 1771; and commanded the “Adventure”
which accompanied Captain Cook (in the “Resolution”)
in Cook’s second voyage. On this expedition Furneaux
was twice separated from his leader (February 8–May 19, 1773;
October 22, 1773–July 14, 1774, the date of his return to
England). On the former occasion he explored a great part of
the south and east coasts of Tasmania, and made the earliest
British chart of the same. Most of his names here survive;
Cook, visiting this shore-line on his third voyage, confirmed
Furneaux’s account and delineation of it (with certain minor
criticisms and emendations), and named after him the islands
in Banks Straits, opening into Bass’s Straits, and the group now
known as the Low Archipelago. After the “Adventure” was
finally separated from the “Resolution” off New Zealand in
October 1773, Furneaux returned home alone, bringing with him
Omai of Ulaietea. This first South Sea Islander seen in the
British Isles returned to his home with Cook in 1776–1777.
Furneaux was made a captain in 1775, and commanded the
“Syren” in the British attack of the 28th of June 1776 upon
Charleston, South Carolina. His successful efforts to introduce
domestic animals and potatoes into the South Sea Islands are
worthy of note. He died at Swilly on the 19th of September
1781.
See Hawkesworth’s Narrative of Wallis’ Voyage; Captain Cook’s Narrative of his Second Voyage; also T. Furneaux’s life by Rev. Henry Furneaux in the Dictionary of National Biography.
FURNES (Flem. Veurne), an old-fashioned little town amid
the dunes near the coast in West Flanders, Belgium, about
26 m. S.W. of Bruges. Pop. (1904) 6099. It is the centre of a
considerable area extending to the French frontier, and its
market is an important one for the disposal of corn, stock, hops
and dairy produce. During the Norman raids Furnes was
destroyed, and the present town was built by Baldwin Bras de
Fer, first count of Flanders, about the year 870. At the height
of the prosperity of the Flemish communes in the 14th century
there were dependent on the barony of Furnes not fewer than
fifty-two rich villages, but these have all disappeared, partly
no doubt as the consequence of repeated French invasions down
to the end of the 18th century, but chiefly through the encroachment
of the sea followed by the accumulation of sand along the
whole of this portion of the coast. Furnes contains many
curious old houses and the church of St Walburga, which is a
fine survival of the 13th century with some older portions. The
old church and buildings, grouped round the Grand Place, which
is the scene of the weekly market, present a quaint picture
which is perhaps not to be equalled in the country. Near Furnes
on the seashore is the fashionable bathing place called La Panne.
Furnes one day a year becomes a centre of attraction to all the people of Flanders. This is the last Sunday in July, when the fête of Calvary and the Crucifixion is celebrated. Of all popular festivities in Belgium this is the nearest approach to the old Passion Play. The whole story of Christ is told with great precision by means of succeeding groups which typify the different phases of the subject. The people of Furnes pose as Roman soldiers or Jewish priests, as the apostles or mere spectators, while the women put on long black veils so that they may figure in the procession as the just women.
FURNESS, HORACE HOWARD (1833–), American
Shakespearian scholar, was born in Philadelphia on the 2nd of
November 1833, being the son of William Henry Furness (1802–1896)
minister of the First Unitarian church in that city, a
powerful preacher and writer. He graduated at Harvard in
1854, and was admitted to the bar in 1859, but soon devoted
himself to the study of Shakespeare. He accumulated a collection
of illustrative material of great richness and extent, and brought
out in 1871 the first volume of a new Variorum edition, designed
to represent and summarize the conclusions of the best authorities
in all languages—textual, critical and annotative. The volumes
appeared as follows: Romeo and Juliet (1871); Macbeth (1873)
(revised edition, 1903); Hamlet (2 vols., 1877); King Lear
(1880); Othello (1886); The Merchant of Venice (1888); As You
Like It (1890); The Tempest (1892); A Midsummer Night’s
Dream (1895); The Winter’s Tale (1898); Much Ado about
Nothing (1899); Twelfth Night (1901); Love’s Labour’s Lost
(1904). The edition has been generally accepted as a thorough
and scholarly piece of work; its chief fault is that, beginning
with Othello (1886), the editor used the First Folio text as his
basis, while in others he makes the text of the Cambridge (Globe)
editors his foundation. His wife, Helen Kate Furness (1837–1883),
compiled A Concordance to the Poems of Shakespeare (1872).
FURNESS, a district of Lancashire, England, separated from
the major portion of the county by Morecambe Bay. It is
bounded S.E. by this inlet of the Irish Sea, S.W. by the sea,
W. by the Duddon estuary and Cumberland, and N. and E. by
Westmorland. Its area is about 250 sq. m. It forms the greater
part of the North Lonsdale parliamentary division of Lancashire,
and contains the parliamentary borough of Barrow-in-Furness.
The surface is almost entirely hilly. The northern half is included
in the celebrated Lake District, and contains such eminences
as the Old Man of Coniston and Wetherlam. Apart from the
Duddon, which forms part of the western boundary, the principal
rivers are the Leven and Crake, flowing southward into a common
estuary in Morecambe Bay. The Leven drains Windermere
and the Crake Coniston Lake. The usage of the term “Lake
District,” however, tends to limit the name of Furness in common
thought to the district south of the Lakes, where several of the
place-names are suffixed with that of the district, as Barrow-in-Furness,
Dalton-in-Furness, Broughton-in-Furness. Between
