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They were parts of an engine intended for the great Paris water-works; the engine was to pump water by the power of steam; and the castings had been made in England, and had just been landed from an English ship. "England!" exclaimed the boy, "ah! when I am a man I will go see the country where such grand machines are made!"
Archaeologists are probably not aware how much they owe to worms for the preservation of many ancient objects. Coins, gold ornaments, stone implements, &c., if dropped on the surface of the ground, will infallibly be buried by the castings of worms in a few years, and will thus be safely preserved, until the land at some future time is turned up.
In the foregoing cases some of the necessary data had to be estimated, but in the two following cases the results are much more trustworthy. A lady, on whose accuracy I can implicitly rely, offered to collect during a year all the castings thrown up on two separate square yards, near Leith Hill Place, in Surrey.
Where before it required 3 tons of coke to melt 1 ton of steel, the same thing was now done with 35 cwt. of very poor slack. Though it was apparently easy to make crucible steel castings, it was not in reality easy to make a true steel, that was to say, to make a metal that contained only the correct proportions of carbon and silicon and manganese.
Those holes, however, had a certain definite shape about them, and when I got a skilful workman to make castings of the interior of these holes, I found that they were the impressions of the joints of a backbone and of the armour of a great reptile, twelve or more feet long. This great beast had died and got buried in the sand; the sand had gradually hardened over the bones, but remained porous.
These observations indicate that the castings had been blown by the south-west winds from the circular enclosed space into the trench on the north-east side; but many more measurements in other analogous cases would be requisite for a trustworthy result.
If earth were swallowed only when worms deepened their burrows or made new ones, castings would be thrown up only occasionally; but in many places fresh castings may be seen every morning, and the amount of earth ejected from the same burrow on successive days is large. Yet worms do not burrow to a great depth, except when the weather is very dry or intensely cold.
It should be premised that in the several following cases, the finer matter was first washed away from the castings, and then all the particles of bricks, tiles and concrete were collected without any selection, and were afterwards examined.
With respect to the strength and fatigue resistance of chilled castings, details were given of some impact tests made in July, 1864, at Pontypool, in the presence of Captain Palliser, upon some of his chilled bolts, 12¾ in. long by 4 in. diameter, made from Pontypool cold-blast pig iron.
"What, ho! sir knave," exclaimed Roland, "is it thus you feed the eyas with unwashed meat, as if you were gorging the foul brancher of a worthless hoodie-crow? by the mass, and thou hast neglected its castings also for these two days! Think'st thou I ventured my neck to bring the bird down from the crag, that thou shouldst spoil him by thy neglect?"
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