and crucibles disinterred by us are peculiar in form, and appear to testify that the use of the blast to hasten the combustion of the fuel was then unknown.)'
It may here be remarked that Mr T. Wright shows that the Romans in Britain smelted their iron very imperfectly. 'It is supposed that layers of iron ore, broken up, and charcoal mixed with limestone as a flux, were piled together, and enclosed in a wall and covering of clay, with holes at the bottom for letting in the draught, and allowing the melted metal to run out. For this purpose they were usually placed on sloping ground. Rude bellows were, perhaps, used, worked by different contrivances.' Mr Bruce, in his account of the 'Roman Wall,' has pointed out a very curious contrivance for producing a blast in the furnaces of the extensive Roman iron-works in the neighbourhood of Epiacum (Lanchester). A part of the valley, rendered barren by the heaps of slightly-covered cinders, had never been cultivated till very recent times. 'During the operation of bringing this common into cultivation,' Mr Bruce says, 'the method adopted by the Romans of producing the blast necessary to smelt the metal was made apparent. Two tunnels had been formed in the side of a hill; they were wide at one extremity, but tapered off to a narrow bore at the other, where they met in a point. The mouths of the channels opened towards the west, from which quarter a prevalent wind blows in this valley, and sometimes with great violence. The blast received by them would, when the wind was high, be poured with considerable force and effect upon the smelting furnaces at the extremity of the tunnels.' This primitive mode of
