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THE Marine. Review 31 by reducing plumbago to dust, mixing it with a small quan- tity of glutinous matter and expelling it in a pasty state by hydraulic pressure through small orifices, just as lead pipe and lead wire are squirted. We can do no more than allude to his type founding machine and type composing machine. An admirable instance of the extraordinary inventive powers of the man, or to bé more exact, of the instinct which en- abled him to overcome difficulties, is supplied by the chapter in which he describes the way in which he produced Utrecht velvet, which is a material with a deep pile standing up in a pattern from a flat woven surface. Nine persons out of ten think that the pattern is produced by cutting away a por- tion of the pile. It is really made by stamping with hot dies. Cotton velvet had been made in this way for some time, but a firm of decorators--Messrs. Platt, of Bond street--desired to imitate some splendid old specimens of figured Genoa vel- vet with a satin ground. Mr. Bessemer's fame .as a die maker led them to apply to him, and he took the subject up at once, and failed. No amount of pressure or treatment would keep the pile lying down permanently. The pile of Utrecht velvet is made of a very harsh, stubborn wool, spe- cially intended to stand hard wear. Bessemer's explanation of how he attained success we give in his own words: "T began to fear that I should be no more successful than others in dealing with this material. Further consideration, 'however, and a little study of the properties of hair and wool, led me to the idea that these substances were really of the nature of horn; and this material, I knew, was capable of semi-fusion at high temperatures, and was in that condi- tion suitable for being molded into various ornamental shapes, which permanently retained cold the forms thus impressed on them in their heated state. I now felt that I was on the right scent, and believed that if I could rapidly submit the ma- terial to a very high temperature, and then remove it away as quickly, a partial fusion of the part in contact with the hot surface of the die would take place, and produce a glossy surface like satin, which would never stand up as pile. I had no sooner got this view of the matter than I took meas- ures to put it to a practical test. The result went to show that by maintaining the metal surface which was in contact with the velvet at a very high temperature for a short and definite period, and acting under a carefully regulated amount of pressure, the process could be made a perfect success. These experiments also proved that the temperature must be so high as to produce a semi-fusion of the wool, and that if continued for . fraction of a minute too long the fabric would be destroyed.' : For details we must refer our readers to the book before us. A machine was made, and for a long time Bessemer was paid six shillings a yard for passing the velvet through the rolls. Ultimately a Banbury firm making Utrecht. vel- vet bought the whole of the plant, and by degrees: the cost of embossing was brought down to one penny per yard.- It will be seen that so far Bessemer had been fairly: suc- cessful in a pecuniary sense. He had a very close friend, Mr. Richard Allen, and Bessemer married Miss Allen, at what date does not appear. Indeed, all through this book the dates of events are regarded as trivial matters of no consequence, and we jump from period to period in a very puzzling fashion. However, the marriage was in every way a success. We have said that Bessemer was an inventor with sufficient money to carry his ideas into practice, and we come now to that invention which made him a rich man, bringing him in as it did a large income for many years. The whole story of the invention of bronze powders is told in detail in Chapter V. Its inception was the result of that extraordinary curiosity to which we have had occasion already to refer. He bought some "gold powder" to illuminate an inscription in a portfolio of paintings of flowers executed by his sister, who was an excellent artist. He tells us that he was greatly surprised that he had to pay at the rate of seven shillings per ounce for it, and at once began to puzzle his brains to know how it was made. He tested the powder with acid and found there was no gold in it--it was brass, and nothing but brass. "Here was. powdered brass selling at £5 12s per pound, while the raw material from which it was made cost probably no more than sixpence. It must surely, I thought, be made slowly and laboriously by some old-fashioned hand process, and, if so, it offers a splendid opportunity for any mechanic who can devise a machine capable of producing it simply by power." Then began a long struggle, and at last he found out that the reason why bronze powder shines is that it is really composed of tiny flakes like the feathers on a butterfly's wing. No finer example of inductive reasoning on a technical subject is to. be found than the contents of this chapter. At last the necessary machinery was made, all the drawings being Bessemer's own work. As no patent would be of use, the strictest secrecy was observed, Bessemer, AF len, and Bessemer's two sons, being alone in the secret. An old mansion known as Baxter House, standing in its own grounds not far from St. Pancras Church, was rented on a long lease, and the factory was built in the garden, each dif. ferent machine worked in a room by itself secured with a Chubb lock, and each machine was, besides, covered with a case which must be broken open by those who did not pos- sess the key. Here we quote once more: "Tt has often been remarked that the unforeseen is always sure to happen, and thus it was in reference to the intense and ceaseless noise in No. 2 room, where thirty pieces of solid brass. were being simultaneously operated on at a very high speed, each piece throwing off from its respective surface some 2,000 to 3,000 fine needle-like filaments per minute. These fell in a continuous shower, and became so felted and interlaced that it was.not safe to attempt to lift any portion with the naked hand; for with the slightest pres- sure the hand was pierced, and dozens of these fine pieces, three-eighths of an inch in length, entered the skin and were found sticking to the fingers in every direction, like the spines on a prickly pear, or the thorns on the stern of the rose. These needle-like pieces owed their form to the intense vi- bration of the machine, and each one of the millions of fila- ments, as it was forcibly severed from the parent mass, ut- tered its shrill protest and helped to swell the fearful chorus. Let those who have, happily, never heard the. machine in question imagine the screech of a hundred discordant fiddles, accompanied by the piercing screams of as many locomotives, all bottled up in a small room. These shrill sounds reverber- ating from floor to ceiling, until the very atmosphere seemed thick with the ceaseless roar, and the human voice at its high- est pitch was entirely lost and inaudible. This was a result 'I might reasonably have anticipated, knowing as I did what the machine had to do, but in 'reality it never crossed my mind. Double doors with baize were found necessary to deaden the sound, and prevent its penetrating into the main building, while the machine itself was doomed henceforth to work in absolute solitude." These rent filaments were next passed through rolls, which reduced them to flakes; and here we have again an instance of Bessemer's extraordinary instinct for getting out of dif- ficulties. It was found' that the filaments in going through the flattening rolls, became felted together and came out as a thin sheet of brass. This difficulty was entirely overcome by adding about three drops of olive oil to every pound of fila- ments. For the final details of one of the most ingenious processes ever devised we must refer our readers to the book itself. For the account of the sugar cane press which he invented, which got him the gold medal of the Society of Arts, and was never used commercially, we must refer our readers to the autobiography. We must follow the same 'course with ref-