y let in
their mettal, which is made so very fluid by the violence of the fire,
that it not only runs to a considerable distance, but stands afterwards
boiling a great while.

"After these furnaces are once at work, they keep them constantly
employed for many months together, never suffering the fire to slacken
night or day, but still supplying the waste of fuel and other materials
with fresh, poured in at the top.

"Several attempts have been made to bring in the use of the sea coal in
these works instead of charcoal; the former being to be had at an easy
rate, the latter not without a great expence; but hitherto they have
proved ineffectual, the workmen finding by experience that a sea coal
fire, how vehement soever, will not penetrate the most fixed parts of the
ore, by which means they leave much of the mettal behind them unmelted.

"From these furnaces they bring the sows and piggs of iron, as they call
them, to their forges; these are two sorts, though they stood together
under the same roof; one they call their finery, and the other chafers:
both of them are upon hearths, upon which they place great heaps of sea
coal, and behind them bellows like those of the furnaces, but nothing
near so large.

"In such finerys they first put their piggs of iron, placing three or
four of them together, behind the fire, with a little of one end thrust
into it, where softening by degrees they stir and work them with long
barrs of iron till the mettal runs together in a round masse or lump,
which they call an half bloome: this they take out, and giving it a few
strokes with their sledges, they carry it to a great weighty hammer,
raised likewise by the motion of a water-wheel, where applying it
dexterously to the blows, they presently beat it into a thick short
square; this they put into the finery again, and heating it red hot, they
work it under the same hammer till it comes to the shape of a bar in the
middle, with two square knobs in the ends; last of all they give it other
beatings in the chaffers, and more workings under the hammer, till they
have brought their iron into barrs of several shapes, in which fashion
they expose them to sale.

"All their principal iron undergoes the aforementioned preparations, yet
for several other purposes, as for backs of chimneys, hearths of ovens,
and the like, they have a sort of cast iron, which they take out of the
receivers of the furnace, so soon as it is melted, in great ladles, an