With all this ill-usage it showed no sign of cracking or fracture. This tyre has for the last thirty-five years been exhibited in South Kensington Museum, and is undeniable evidence of the toughness and endurance of Bessemer steel under the most violent and abnormal strains. It also affords a good example of the tough mild steel manufactured at our Sheffield works at that early date.

In the summer of 1861, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers held a provincial meeting at Sheffield, and, as a member of this Institution, it was only natural that I should read a paper on the occasion of their visit to the town where my steel works were located. I was still most anxious that my own countrymen should use Bessemer steel for the manufacture of ordnance: for this, as my readers are aware, was the express purpose to which I had devoted myself for so long a period, and striven so earnestly to accomplish.

The fact that I had succeeded in making a special mild steel, in every way adapted for the purpose, was proved by a report of the Belgian Government, which had spontaneously applied to me to make them a trial gun, thirteen months before the date on which I read my paper before the Sheffield meeting: a meeting which was presided over by Sir William Armstrong. This gun was made at our works, and sent to the Fort, at Antwerp, on the 16th June, 1860, its receipt being acknowledged in the following letter.

Brussels, August 19th, 1860.

Sir,

I have the honour to inform you that the conical steel forging, rough from the forge, which was manufactured in your establishment, and of which you advised the shipment in your letter (stated in the margin), was received by the Commander of Artillery, in the Fort of Antwerp. Being submitted to the examination of a commission composed of officers of the cannon foundry of Liége, it was found to weigh 840 kilos. (equal 16 cwt. 2 qrs. and 22 lbs.), and to be of good quality of steel. Be pleased, Sir, to accept the assurance of my distinguished consideration. (Signed) THE MINISTER OF WAR.

This gun-block was bored and finished under military inspection, at Antwerp, and went through the regulation proofs in a perfectly satisfactory manner. It was afterwards determined to bore it to a much larger size, viz., 4.75 in. in diameter, suitable for 12-pounder spherical shots, and to fire larger charges of powder and to increase the number of shots, each of such additions being repeated three times, until the gun should at last give way, the charges of powder rising from 2 lb. up to 6 3/4 lb., and the shots from one to eight. On firing the second round of eight shots the gun gave way, apparently by the over-riding of the spherical shot.

I have annexed an accurate scale engraving of the gun as altered to a 4.75 in. bore, suitable for 12- pounder spherical shot (see Fig. 66, Plate XXVI).

In re-boring, the gun was reduced to 9 1/4 cwt., only about ten times the weight of the eight shot, the thickness of metal at the breech being 2 3/8 in., and 1 3/4 in. at the muzzle. In fact, it was little more than a mere gun lining, but it nevertheless afforded the most incontestable proof of the extraordinary endurance of this metal under conditions of extreme severity. The fact that the Belgian Government should seek out a foreign manufacturer, and put this new material to the test, only makes it more extraordinary that our own Government should have passed it by.

Nor was this Belgian gun an isolated case, for, up to the date of which I am writing (Midsummer, 1861), several agents of foreign Governments had spontaneously applied to the Bessemer Steel Works, at Sheffield, for steel guns. But our firm could not manufacture built-up guns with a steel barrel or inner tube, because this would have manifestly been a direct infringement of Captain Blakeley's patent of February, 1855; and knowing that iron, in any welded form, would be vastly inferior to steel for the inner tube of a gun, we declined to manufacture such an inferior article, and confined ourselves to making simple solid-forged steel guns and gun-tubes. Up to this tine we had supplied twenty-eight guns, consisting