axles; wheels that will lie turned up
in the air at the bottoms of viaducts; and wheels that in various ways
will see astonishing adventures, because in railway-transit there are
telescopings and wheels within wheels. The English and the foreign trade
of the Lobdell Company is due to its manufacture of wheels in the
material or process lately known as chilled iron. This manufacture has
not yet penetrated the British intellect. Take the foreman of an English
car-manufactory, tell him that you will supply him a wheel about as
durable as a wheel with a steel tire at less than half the cost, and he
will laugh at you for an impudent idiot. But they _use_ our wheels. The
"chilling" of iron, when poured into a mould partly iron-faced, is very
singular: as the melted metal hardens against the metallic boundary, its
granulation changes to a certain depth, and the outside becomes
excessively strong: species of crystals seem to form, presenting their
ends to the surface, and meeting the wear and tear there to be
experienced. The use of this fact secures, in many manufactures, a
hardness approaching that of steel, without increase of cost. This
company employs the process both for car-wheels and for the large
cylinders (or "rolls") used in paper-mills. It is not to be supposed
that the work is all rude and rough, like ordinary iron casting. The
polishing of the large cylinders almost suggests diamond-cutting, it is
so fine. So true is the finish that a pair of these broad rolls, perhaps
five feet across, may be approached so near each other that the light
showing between them is decomposed: a blade of blue or violet light,
inexpressibly thin and of the width of the cylinders, passes through the
entire distance. As for the "chilling" of iron, it was applied first to
wheels in Baltimore, in 1833, by Mr. Ross Winans; and then, during the
same year, Mr. Bonney and his nephew, George G. Lobdell, established the
business we see, which has gradually grown to its present capacity of
three hundred wheels per day.

[Illustration: FOUNTAIN.]

[Illustration: "IN MEMORY OF THE SOLDIERS AND SAILORS OF DELAWARE WHO
FELL IN THE STRUGGLE FOR THE UNION."]

The use of such cylinders as we have just seen under the difficult
process of polishing is only understood when we explore some large
paper-mill, where they take the place of the old-fashioned frame of wire
gauze which produced the hand-made paper. We may select the splendid
works of Messrs. J