Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/360

346 a mud-puddle, it would fill in a moment with the impure matter, which, on compression, would all flow out again, leaving the sponge as it was before the dip. There is this difference in the simile: the meshes of the sponge are in the metal puddle itself, and they all come out together with the mass. This mass, cooling a little on its way to make it more coherent, goes under a hammer, or into a squeezing machine, which, at the first blow or turn, throws out the spray of the impure puddle-matter, such as melted stone, cinder, &c. Thus the sponge part is only the genuine iron meshes or grains, which are thus squeezed and hammered and rolled into solid bars. To see these masses at white heat running down iron slide-ways from every direction to the squeezers, hammers, and rollers, is a stirring sight. Some of these hammers are of a tremendous power, especially the Nasmyth pounder. When it falls with a ton weight upon a liquid boulder, you will see a horizontal shower of meteors which would penetrate a suit of the best broadcloth considerable distance. There was machine called the squeezer which operated to admiration in the first stages. It was a large fluted horizontal wheel which turned in a fluted semicircular case, the receiving being twice as large as the delivering hopper. A mass of the half-liquid material was thrust in on the left, and pressed into a constantly