This celebrated steel is made in India, at little furnaces supplied with air by several pairs of small bellows, worked assiduously by men and boys; and thus is produced the raw material of the famed Damascus sword blades, the various patterns upon which have been imitated in our linen manufacture, and hence called damask. To ascertain the cause of this beautiful appearance has given rise to a good deal of investigation, and several of our chemists, as well as others on the continent, have entered upon the inquiry. The wootz imported from Bombay is in form of a round cake about 2 lbs. weight Dr. Pearson, in an essay published many years ago in the Philosophical Transactions, Vol. XVII., gave it as his opinion that it is made direct from the ore, and, consequently, that it has never been in the state of wrought iron. "For the cake," he says, "is evidently a mass which has been fused; and the grain of the fracture is what l have never seen in cement steel before it is hammered or melted." This opinion consists with the composition of wootz; for it is obvious that a small portion of oxide of iron might escape metallization, and be melted with the rest of the matter.

The cakes appear to have been cut almost through, while white hot, at the place where wootz is manufactured; and as it is not probable that it is then plunged in cold water, the great hardness of the pieces imported above that of our steel must be imputed to its containing oxide, and, consequently, oxygen. The particular uses to which wootz may be applied may be inferred from the preceding account of its properties and composition. A very general opinion is, that the waved appearance is produced by an intermixture of steel and iron forged together, an opinion that is in some degree founded upon experiment, as very close resemblances have been made by that process. Many sword blades, in no respect inferior to the Eastern originals, have been fabricated in the dominions of Austria and Prussia, by a process invented by Professor Crevilli, who had given detailed instructions for their manufacture in a small treatise published at Milan, and entitled, Memoria sull' Arte di fabbricare le Sciabole di Damasco.

An epitome of Crevilli's treatise was published in the Allgemaine Militar Zeitung, the following translation of which was given in a recent number of the United Service Journal. "A long flat piece of malleable steel, of about one inch and a half in breadth, and one-eighth in thickness, is to be first bound with iron wire, at intervals of one-third of an inch. The iron and steel are to be then incorporated by welding, and repeated additions (10 or 20) of iron wire made to the first portion, with which they must be firmly amalgamated. This compound material is then to be stretched and divided into shorter lengths, to which, by the usual process of welding, grinding, and tempering, any wished-for form may be given. By filing semicircular grooves into both sides of the blade, and again subjecting it to the hammer, a beautiful roset-shaped Damascus is obtained: the material can he made to assume any other form. The solution by which the figures are made visible, is the usual one of aquafortis and vinegar.

The success of this method, and the excellence of the blades which have been constructed according to these directions, have, by various trials, been placed beyond all doubt.

Professor Crevilli has had several sabre blades prepared under his own instruction at Milan; similar experiments have, by the Emperor's commands, been made at the Polytechnical Institution at Vienna: and finally, the War Office has empowered Daniel Fischar, a manufacturer of small arms in that capital, to proceed with the manufacture on a largo scale. These blades, which, when made in large quantities, are but little dearer than those in common use, have been submitted to the severest tests. . . . An idea of their extraordinary tenacity may be formed from the fact, that out of 210 blades that were examined by a military commission, and each of which was required to bear three cuts against iron, and two against a flat wooden table, not a single one snapped, or had its edge indented. In Prussia this method of preparing sword blades is stated to have been in practice several years, and to have been attended with equal success." M.Breant, examiner-general of assays at the Royal Mint of Paris, investigated the nature and composition of wootz very philosophically.

In an interesting memoir which he published on this subject, he observes, that if in the preparation of ordinary steel sufficient carbon has not entered, the steel formed will only be in proportion to the quantity of combined carbon; the rest will be iron, only mixed. The cooling then takes place slowly, the more fusible particles of steel will tend to unite together and separate themselves from the portion of iron. This alloy will therefore be capable of developing a damask, but this damask will be white, and slightly marked, and the metal will not be susceptible of great hardness, because it will be mixed with iron. If the proportion of charcoal be exactly such as it ought to be in order to convert the whole of the iron into steel, there will be only one sort of combination; but if the carbon is a little in excess, the whole of the iron will in the first place be converted into steel, afterwards the carbon remaining in the crucible will combine in a new proportion with the part of the steel already formed. There will in this case be two distinct compounds, namely pure steel, and carburetted steel, or cast iron. These two compounds, at first mixed confusedly, will tend to separate when the liquid matter remains at rest.

A crystallization will then form, in which the particles of the two compounds will arrange themselves according to their respective affinity or specific gravity. If a blade made of this steel be put into acidulated water, a very apparent damask will be developed, in which the pure steel parts will be black, and those of carburetted steel will remain white. The carbon irregularly dispersed in the metal, and forming two distinct combinations, is, then, that which occasions the damask; and it is obvious that the slower the cooling, the larger the veins of the damask should be.

"Plumbago," says M. Breant, "has appeared to me in some circumstances to soften the steel, which an excess of carbon would render too harsh; at least l have obtained excellent results with a hundred parts of steel, one of smoke-black, and one of plumbago. But a very remarkable experiment in regard to the advantage which may be derived from it, in working on a large scale, is that a hundred parts of soft iron, and two of smoke-black, melt as easily as common steel." From this announcement by M. Breant, it appears, that he was unacquainted with Mr. Mushat's patent process of converting malleable iron into steel by fusion with charcoal, described at page 787. M. Breant continues, "It must be supposed that the whole of the carbon does not enter into combination. Some of our best blades are the product of this combination. It is evident from this experiment that it is not necessary, in order to obtain very good steel, to begin the operation by cementation with iron. The iron may be treated immediately with the smoke-black, and this would greatly diminish the expense of the manufacture.

A hundred parts of the filings of very grey cast-iron, and a hundred parts of similar filings previously oxidized, have produced a steel of a fine damask, and fit for the manufacture of bright arms; it is remarkable for its elasticity, a quality not possessed by the Indian steel. The more carbon the steel contains, the more difficult it is to forge. Most of the specimens that l have prepared have not been drawn out, but at a temperature the limits of which are extremely confined." "l am convinced from experience, that the orbicular veins called ronces by the workman, which are seen on fine oriental blades, are the result of the manner of forging. If we content ourselves with drawing the steel out lengthwise, the veins will be longitudinal; if we extend it equally in all directions, the damask has a crystalline appearance. If we render it wavy in the two directions, there will be shades and gradations as in the oriental damask. It will not require long trials to produce any variegated design we desire." - Repertory of Arts.

Having explained the most approved modes of preparing the celebrated damasked steel, as well as the various steels of our now no less celebrated British manufacturers, we proceed to the consideration of another department of the subject.