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information is not attainable, the anthracite production of the vicinity of the Susquehanna was about 75,000 tons for 1859. The charcoal iron made in this district is much more difficult of access for the last year; but as the area is large, and timber often abundant, it was probably 20,000 tons. Taking this estimate, with the better known production of the Schuylkill and Lehigh, we roughly state the total of charcoal iron for Eastern Pennsylvania at 39,000 tons. The following is a tabular statement of the iron production for 1859 and previous years :

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The value of this quality of iron, at the low average price for anthracite of $22 per ton, which was the ruling quotation for the year, is $4,649,304, to which the value of the charcoal iron produced would add enough to make up the sum of $5,000,000.

ANALYSIS OF PLATINA AND GOLD IN MISSOURI.

BY DR. THEODORE WEISZ.

[Translated from the Mississippi Handel Zeitung.]

My investigations upon the average value of the precious metals found in the mineral of Madison County, Mo., being now completed, enables me to publish the result of my labor.

There was brought forth from the depth of six feet beneath the surface a considerable quantity—this was pulverized, and of this there was taken an average trial specimen for investigation.

The result of the investigation was, that there was found in this ore 0.00043 per cent gold, and 0.00086 per cent platina, which makes an aggregate of 739 grains of gold per ton, and 1,478 grains of platina per ton.

The value of the gold is....

The value of the platina is.

Or a total of.....

$29 56

18 58

$48 14

Although this yield shows a sufficiently large result to make it worthy of

working, there is yet cause to presume that the quantity of precious metals increases in proportion as the shaft is deepened. I will, therefore, publish from time to time communications upon the product.

In order to form an opinion as regards the working ability of this mining concern, I herewith present a table showing the value of the gold ores most known, from which it can be seen that the mines in Madison County belong not to the poorest, and deserve, indeed, such attention that there may be found capitalists who, by participation, i. e., by contributing to the enlargement of pecuniary means, could cause a go ahead," and who would carry on the business upon a large scale, inasmuch as material enough is on hand to last for centuries :—

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For copying working drawings, this process is much used in large shops. The government has employed it for some years. Tracings from perfected drawings may be inaccurate-figures especially may be wrongly copied, but a photograph is of course sure to be right, and prevents many mistakes which are not cheaply rectified in the finished work-when unmatched parts come together and do not fit.

The cheaper productions of engravings of machinery, etc., will be of great advantage to the professions and trades concerned. Pictures on blocks for woodcuts are quite commonly made by the photographic process instead of the draftsman's pencil. For perspective representations, this lessens the expense, and perfects the lines. It is of course inapplicable to sectional and strictly mechanical drawings, in either plane elevation or isometrical perspective. Photographing on stone has been used for the same purpose-for making the picture to be engraved. Recently, the engraving itself, or rather the lithotype-the impression on the stone which produces the pictures on paper, has been done by photography without the aid of subsequent engraving. Photography has also been applied to copper printing. These arts are already beginning to be a commercial success, and are rapidly improving.

SAW CAPACITY.

A circular saw, 24 feet in diameter, and making 270 revolutions per minute, will saw 40 square feet of oak and 70 square feet of spruce per hour per horsepower.

PROGRESS-SCALES.

Art has by no means exhausted itself either in the fine or mechanical departments. In the latter, particularly where usefulness and economy are both combined, astonishing progress has been made within the last few years. In this respect it must be conceded that the American artisan excels those of any other country. Weighed in the balance of a just criticism, all are obliged to admit that the scales of FAIRBANKS & Co., New York, who have devoted their time and attention to the science of weighing, as applied to the compound balance, by which it has been brought to the highest perfection, are, without exception, the best ever invented. We know, whereof we affirm, because we have tested their value, and are fully satisfied of their superior merits. The various descriptions of their platform scales embrace every variety of size and form, from the mammoth contrivance of a canal lock scale, capable of weighing 500 tons, to the nice and delicate balance required for chemical analysis and pharmacy, in which the weight of a thousandth part of a grain is marked by a sensible deflection of the beam. The introduction of these scales has wrought a revolution in the transaction of various business, and their accuracy is such that a uniformity in weights has been established all over the country, thus making them a national, legalized standard. Nor are they confined to the United States; they have found their way to almost every part of the civilized world, and are adapted to the standards of all countries, so that it may be said all nations, if not "weighed in these balances," at least weigh by them. They are adapted to every branch of business, and so great is the facility for weighing that measure has given place to weight. Instead of the half bushel measure for wheat, corn, and other cereals, as formerly used, whereby only a small number of bushels could be measured in a day, now, by the apparatus connected with the platform scales, thousands of bushels are weighed in a single hour. Railroad cars, loaded with live stock, coal, iron ore, and other heavy freights, are weighed by platform scales constructed under the tracks; and canal boats, freighted with hundreds of tons, are weighed with dispatch and accuracy. At the company's warehouse in New York may be found every variety and style of platform scales required in business transactions; also, weighing beams, gold balances for banks, brokers, jewelers, druggists, confectioners' scales, letter balances, and every descriptions of weighing apparatus.

UNITS OF POWER.

An active man in the prime of life can raise 100 pounds one foot per second, working 10 hours per day; a horse can raise 550 pounds in the same space of time. These are units of horse and man-powers.

One gallon of water converted into steam will raise 5 gallons of water at 50° up to 212°, which is the sensible heat of the steam; there are, therefore, 944 degrees of latent heat in the steam.

Ꮪ Ꭺ Ꮮ Ꭲ .

In America we have springs of salt water; in Cheshire, England, there are beds of red salt. 30 feet thick; in Poland there are salt mines extending for several miles in caverns, at a depth of 600 feet beneath the surface; at Cordova, in Spain, there is a mountain of salt 300 feet high; and in Peru there are salt mines 10,000 feet above the level of the sea.

TIN.

There are few of the metals possessed of the same interesting relations as the one we have now before us. The archæology of tin is more than usually attractive, and in the very dawn of history it is mentioned by the great Hebrew lawgiver as one of the metals to be purified by fire. The early inhabitants of Etruria and Central Italy were skilled in the applications of tin; the nations of the Levant were likewise accustomed to its use; but the most interesting point to us in the history of this metal resides in the memorable traffic which the Tyrian mariners pursued with the natives of the British Islands. Perhaps the whole catalogue of Phoenician commerce, so eloquently denounced by the prophet Ezekiel, could yield no article of superior value to this Cornish metal; indeed, it must have been more valuable to them than the cedars of Lebanon or the gold of Ophir. There was at that period an enormous consumption of bronze, by contemporary nations, in all their instruments of art and war; and tin—a metal of rare occurrence and limited distribution-is the most essential constituent of bronze, as we learn from Pliny. If we recollect, too, that the Phoenicians possessed a monopoly of this commerce, we shall then be able to conceive the inestimable value to its discoverers of this prolidc tin country. So fully, indeed, was this importance recognized, that those astute merchantmen anxiously concealed from their rivals and contemporaries the geographical situation of these "tin islands." But the secret at length transpired. Publius, a Roman proconsul in Spain, after several unsuccessful efforts, opened to his countrymen the treasures of this undiscovered Dorado; and all through the long period of his tory which has since elapsed, Cornwall has continued to furnish an inexhaustible supply of the metal. The principal localities of tin are Cornwall, Bohemia, and Saxony, in Europe; Malacca, Pegu, and Banca in Asia. Cornwall, notwithstanding its prodigious and long-continued drain, is still the most prolific tin district in the world. It has been calculated by Mr. Porter and others that Cornwall yields annually upwards of 50,000 tons of the metal, the value of which varies from £400,000 to £500,000.

CLASSIFICATION OF LEATHER SKINS.

The stoutest leather is made from ox-hides. Buff leather was formerly made from the hide of the buffalo, but it is now furnished by the cow-hide. Calf-skin supplies the great demand for the upper part of boots and shoes. Sheep-skins form a thin, cheap leather; lamb skins are used for gloves; goat and kid-sking form a light leather of fine quality; deer skins are usually shamoyed, or dressed in oil; horse-hide is prepared for harness work, &c.; and this, with seal skin. is also used for making enameled leather; dog-skin makes a thin tough leather, but most of the gloves sold as dog-skin are made of lamb-skin. Hog-skin makes a thin, porous leather, and is used for covering the seats of saddles.

In making shamoyed leather, of which washing-leather is a cheap example, the skins of deer, goats, and sheep are impregnated with oil instead of the other ingredients mentioned above. After a certain preparation the skins are beaten for many hours with heavy wooden machines, and cod oil is forced into the pores. Sheep skins, when simply tanned, are employed for inferior book-binding, and for various other purposes for which a cheap leather is required. The mock or imitation morocco, and most of the other colored and dyed leathers used for

women's and children's shoes, carriage linings, and the covering of stools, chairs, sofas, writing tables, &c., are also made of sheep-skin. Lamb skins are mostly dressed white or colored for gloves.

Japanned leather of various kinds is used in coach-making, harness-making, and for various other purposes. Patent leather is covered with a coat of elas

tic japan, which gives a surface like polished glass, impermeable to water; and hides prepared in a more perfectly elastic mode of japanning, which will permit folding without cracking the surface, are called enameled leather; such leather has the japan annealed, something in the same manner as glass; the hides are laid between blankets, and subjected to the heat of an oven at a particular temperature during several hours, until finished properly.

In making Russia leather the skins are first freed from the hair or fleece by steeping them in an ash-lye, then rinsed, fulled, fermented, and cleaned. They are then soaked for forty eight hours in a bath composed of water mixed with a paste of rye flour. The skins, when taken out of the bath, are left in tubs for fifteen days, then washed, and immersed in a boiler containing a hot decoction of willow bark, in which they are handled and pressed for half an hour. This manipulation is repeated twice a day for a week, after which the tanning infusion is renewed, and the process is repeated on the same skins for another week, after which they are exposed to the air to dry, and are then dyed and curried.

Morocco is the skin of a goat, or some other animal resembling it, called menon, and common in the Levant. It is dressed with sumac or galls, and colored with any color, and is much used in upholstery, book-binding, for ladies' shoes, &c. But most of the morocco to be obtained in this country is prepared here from sheep-skins. The name is derived from the kingdom of Morocco, whence it is supposed the manner of preparing this leather was first borrowed. Morocco is, however, brought from the Levant, Barbary, Spain, Flanders, and Russia— red, black, yellow. blue, &c. The process has been latterly greatly simplified, and the brilliancy and durability of the Turkey red successfully imitated. The peculiar ribbed appearance of morocco is given by means of a ball of boxwood, on which is a number of narrow ridges. Sheep-skin morocco is prepared from split skins, a peculiar arrangement of machine being employed for this pur. pose. Instead of stretching the skin on a drum, it is passed between two rollers, the lower one of gun-metal and solid, and the upper one of gun-metal rings; while between the two rollers, and nearly in contact, is the edge of the sharp knife, which is moved by a crank. When a skin is introduced between the two rollers it is dragged through against the knife edge and divided, the solid lower roller supporting the membrane, while the upper one, being capable of moving through a small space by means of its rings, adjusts itself to inequalities in the membrane; where this is thin the ring becomes depressed, and where it is thick they rise up, so that no part escapes the action of the knife. The divided skins are not sewed up into bags, as from their thinness the can be tanned quickly.

TEMPERATURE.

In man the temperature of the blood is 98°, in sheep, 102°, in ducks, 107°. During the chills of ague the heat of man's blood falls to 96° and 94°, while at the height of fever it rises to 102°, and even to 105°.

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