rollers, girders, and the like. A large quantity is consumed in the manufacture of "hollow-ware,' which includes pots, pans, and other cooking-vessels. For all kinds of ornamental objects, again, it is almost exclusively used, because here its property of being readily cast into molds gives it a great advantage on the score of cheapness.

Malleable iron differs considerably in its properties from cast-iron. The latter is practically incompressible, but it can be comparatively easily torn asunder. Malleable iron, on the contrary, possesses great tenacity; it is, moreover, very malleable and ductile, especially at a high temperature, so that it can be rolled into sheets as thin as paper, or drawn into the finest wire. Further, it possesses the valuable property of weldingthat is, two pieces can be completely united together by hammering at a white heat. Malleable iron is largely employed for the innumerable variety of articles included under the_general_term “hardware," such as locks, keys, hinges, bolts, nails, screws, wirework, and the so-called tin plate, which is merely sheet-iron dipped in melted tin. It is the mainstay of the railways and the electric telegraph, and has almost displaced timber as a material for steamships and sailing-vessels. It is also much used for roofs and bridges of large size. Rolled armor-plates for war-ships and fortifications are now made of malicable iron from 5 to 22 in. thick.

Steel possesses several valuable properties which do not belong to either cast or wrought iron. It is harder, denser, and whiter in color. It is also more elastic, takes a higher polish, and rusts less easily. Like malleable iron, it is also weldable. But its most characteristic property consists in its admitting of being tempered at will to any degree of hardness. If, for instance, a piece of steel be heated to redness and plunged into water, it is made hard and brittle; but if it be again heated and slowly cooled, its original softness is restored. By gently reheating the steel it will acquire a gradation of tints indicating various degrees of hardness, beginning with pale straw color, and passing successively to full yellow, brown, purple, and finally to blue. The straw color is the result of a temperature of about 440°, and the blue of about 570° F., the former being the hardest and the latter the softest tempering.

The use of steel is no longer confined to such small articles as files, edge-tools, knives, and other cutlery. By means of improved machinery and processes, steel is at present manufactured on a scale that was little dreamed of thirty years ago, so that such objects as field-guns, heavy shafting, tires, rails, boiler-plates, and the like are now being made of this material. The superior tensile strength of steel, which is about double that of malleable iron, gives it a great advantage where lightness is required. Large numbers of steamships are now being built of steel.

In 1740 the entire quantity of iron made in Great Britain is believed not to have exceeded 25,000 tons; in 1802 the annual make was estimated at 170,000; in 1828, at 702,584; and in 1839, at 1,512,000 tons. In 1854, the first year of the carefully collected statistics now published annually by the mining record office, the produce was 3,069,838, and from that time to the present it has gradually risen to nearly 7,000,000 tons. A very large amount of this pig-iron is converted into malleable iron, as there are now upwards of 7,000 puddling furnaces in the country. In the United States about 2,830,000 tons of pig-iron were made in 1872, but the make had fallen in 1876 to 2,093,236 tons. continent the iron manufacture is rapidly extending in France, Belgium, Prussia, Austria, Sweden, and Russia. It is remarkable that as much as 250,000 tons of steel were made in 1875 both in Germany and France by the Bessemer and other processes, a large quantity being also made in other countries. Notwithstanding the activity of the irontrade abroad, the produce of Great Britain is still about one-half that of all other countries put together.

On the

Siemens's regenerative gas-furnace is now so much used in the making and melting of steel, as well as for other purposes, that it is desirable to give a short description of it here. No furnace yet designed can be compared with it in respect to economical consumption of fuel. It consists of two parts: one of these contains the "regenerators," or, as Dr. Percy calls them, the "accumulators;" the other, which may either be quite near or more than 100 ft. apart, contains the gas-producers" or source of the heat. In the regenerative portion, when the furnace is to be used for the production of iron or steel, there is a melting hearth or bed like that represented at B in fig. 3. Immediately below this hearth there are two pairs of arched chambers filled with fire-bricks placed sufficiently far apart to let air or gases pass freely between them, and at the same time expose a large surface to absorb heat. One pair of these chambers or regenerators communicates by separate flues with one end of the hearth, the other pair with the opposite end of it. Thus we have in duplicate, so to speak, a chamber through which gas and another through which air can be admitted. The furnace being in operation; while the gas and air are being admitted to the hearth through, say, the left pair of these chambers, the highly-heated products of combustion pass through the open brick-work of the corresponding pair on the right before reaching the chimney. What would pass up the chimney as waste heat in an ordinary furnace is thus absorbed by the bricks of the regenerators. After a given time-usually from 30 to 60 minutes-by means of suitable pipes and valves, the arrangement, or if we may so call it, the current, is reversed. Gas and air are now sent through the freshly-heated pair of regenerators, while the "waste heat" in turn passes into the other pair. In this way, by reversing the valves at intervals, hot currents of gas and air, in suitable proportions, are always reaching the hearth where combustion is effected at a very high temperature.

The gas-producer, of which there are commonly four in a block, is a rectangular chamber with a sloping front and grate of firebars, on which, by means of a feeder, a thick layer of fuel is maintained. This fuel is mainly converted into carbonic oxide, hydrogen, and hydrocarbons-all combustible gases-and together forming the "gas" we have referred to in describing the regenerator. Almost any kind of fuel, however poor, may be used for these gas-producers, which are connected by means of a pipe with the generators.

3. Iron in its Physiological and Therapeutic Relations.-Iron is an essential constituent of the coloring matter of the blood-corpuscles of all vertebrate animals; and according to the best authorities, one part by weight of iron is found in 230 parts of blood-corpuscles, and the total quantity of this metal in the blood of a man weighing 140 pounds is about 38 grains. It is the presence of iron in the blood that communicates to the ashes of that fluid their reddish-brown color, the iron being found in them, as the peroxide. The ashes of the hair, of birds' feathers, of the contents of eggs, of the gastric juice, of milk, and indeed of most animal fluids contain traces of this metal.

Nothing is known with certainty regarding the chemical condition of the iron in the animal body, that is to say, whether it is present as a protoxide, a peroxide, etc. It is introduced into the system with the food and drink, and any excess beyond what is required is discharged with the excrements. When an insufficient quantity is contained in the nutriment, chalybeate medicines become necessary. The iron that is set free within the system by the constant disintegration of blood-corpuscles is carried out of the system partly by the urine, partly by the coloring matter of the bile, which is highly ferruginous, and probably is in part eliminated by the hair. The exact part which the iron plays in the body is uncertain; but it is most probable that the power whichthe bloodcorpuscles possess as oxygen carriers is mainly due to the presence of this substance.

When from any cause the blood-corpuscles are reduced in number, the state known as anæmia (q.v.) is produced, which is accompanied by general weakness and deranged functions. In this condition of the system the iron compounds are of incomparably more service than any other remedies. In chlorosis (q, v.), which is closely allied to anæmia, in amenorrhea; and in certain painful nervous affections, the salts of iron are of especial service. The forms in which iron may be prescribed are very numerous, and vary considerably in their utility, according to the readiness with which they get taken up into the blood. Amongst the most generally used ferruginous medicines may be mentioned the tincture of the sesquichloride, the saccharine carbonate, the compound iron mixture (containing the carbonate), the sulphate, the potassio-tartrate, several citrates (especially the citrate of iron and quinine), etc. A course of chalybeate waters (q.v.) may often be prescribed with great advantage, when the patient cannot bear the administration of iron in its ordinary medicinal form.

IRON (ante). The processes of converting the ore into metallic iron are of two kindsdirect and indirect. In the direct process the orc is converted by one operation or a few operations into wrought iron. This method, employed by the ancients, is still used in some parts of the world, as in India and Central Asia, Africa, and South America. With some modifications and improvements it is practiced also in Europe and the United States, and yields the best iron, but at a greater expense than by the indirect process, which consists in first making pig-iron by smelting the ore in a blast-furnace with fluxes, by which means the metal is more readily obtained, and then reducing the product by puddling and other processes, or by certain manipulations converting the pig-iron into cast-steel.

The following table, taken with the preceding from the annual report of the secretary of the American Iron and Steel Association, presented May 20, 1880, shows in tons of 2,000 lbs. the production of all kinds of iron and steel in the United States from 1872 to 1879:

IMPORTS OF PRINCIPAL IRON AND STEEL PRODUCTS FROM ALL COUNTRIES INTO THE UNITED STATES FROM 1871 TO END OF FIRST QUARTER OF 1880.

Castings.

Total..

1,185,984 1,224,144 608,923 248,607 141,079 127,975 110,769 115,626 689,622 413,784

Iron.

The following is the foreign value of iron and steel manufactures (tin-plate excluded) imported into the United States during the time specified 1871, $47,919,926; 1872. $61,724,227; 1873, $45,764,670; 1874, $24,594,534; 1875, $15,264,216; 1876, $10,584,126; 1877, $9,195,368; 1878, $8,943,043; 1879, $20,103,101; three months of 1880, $13,031,674.

Pig-iron

SORTS.

Rolled iron, nails and rails.
Rolled iron, excluding ralls.
Bessemer steel rails
Open hearth steel rails.
Iron and all other rails.
Rails of all kinds

Kegs of cut nails, included
in rolled iron.
Crucible cast-steel.

Siemens Martin or open
hearth steel..

1872.

1874.

1875

1876.

1877.

1878.

1879.

1873. 2,854,558 2,868,278 2,689,413 2,266,581 2,093,236 2,314,585 2,577,361 3,070,875 1,847,922 1,837,430 1,694,616 1,599,516 1,509,269, 1,476,759 1,555,576 2,047,484 941,992 1,076,368 1,110,147 1,097,867 1,042,101 1,144,219 1,232,686 1,627,324 94,070 129,015 144,944 298,863 412,461| 482,169 550,398 683,964 9,897 9,148 905,930 761,062 584,469 501,649 467,168 332,540 822.890 420,160 1,000,000 890,077 729,413 792,512 879,629 764,709 882,685 1,113,273

4,065,322 4,024,704 4,912,180 4,726,881 4,157,814 4,828,918 4,396,130 5,011,021 29,260 34,786 36,328 39,401 39,382 40,430 42,906

56,780

3,000

3,500 7,000 9,050 24,490

25,031

36,126 56,290

All other steel, except Bessemer..

Bessemer steel ingots

120,108

5,464 928,972

Blooms from iron and pig

IRON, a co. in s.e. Missouri; bounded n.e. by Iron mountain and Pilot Knob; 500 sq.m.; pop. '70, 6,278. It is mountainous, and has extensive forests of oak, pine, walnut, etc. Iron ore is abundant, and gold, lead, nickel, and other metals are found. The staple products are grain and wool. The St. Louis and Iron Mountain railroad passes through it. Pilot Knob is in this county, a conical hill 1500 ft. above the sea, and 560 ft. above the plain.

IRON, a co. in s. Utah, extending through the state from e. to w.; intersected in the e. by the Colorado; 9,200 sq.m.; pop. '80, 4,013. The Wasatch mountains cross it in the west. The staple is wool; but wheat, maize, hay, and potatoes are produced. Much of this county is covered with arid plains, and requires irrigation. It abounds in iron and other minerals. Capital, Parowan.

IRON BARK TREE, a name given in Australia to certain species of eucalyptus (q.v.), and particularly E. resinifera, on account of the extreme hardness of the bark. These trees attain a height of 80 or 100 ft., and a circumference near the base of 20 to 25 feet. The timber is very valuable for ship-building, and for other purposes in which hardness and durability are required. It withstands vicissitudes of weather for a great number of years without injury.

IRON-CLAD OATH, an oath of allegiance prescribed by statute of the United States, for those taking office under the national or state governments, in accordance with the provisions of the 14th amendment to the constitution. The oath as administered reads as follows:

do solemnly swear that I have never voluntarily borne arms against the United States since I have been a citizen thereof; that I have voluntarily given no aid, countenance, counsel, or encouragement to persons engaged in armed hostility thereto; that I have neither sought, nor accepted, nor attempted to exercise the functions of any office whatever under any authority or pretended authority in hostility to the United States; that I have not yielded a voluntary support to any pretended government, authority, power, or constitution within the United States, hostile or inimical thereto. And I do further swear that, to the best of my knowledge and ability, I will support and defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion: and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

This oath is still administered to officers under the U. S. government, but its applica tion has been restricted by special acts of congress, relieving, in certain instances, classes and individuals from the effect of its provisions.

IRON-CLAD SHIPS. See ARMOR PLATES, ante.

IRON CROSS, a Prussian order of knighthood, instituted on Mar. 10, 1813. by Fred erick William III., and conferred for distinguished services in the war which was then being carried on. The decoration is an iron cross with silver mounting. The grand cross, a cross of double the size, was presented exclusively for the gaining of a decisive battle, or the capture or brave defense of a fortress.

Irony.

IRON CROWN, the crown of the ancient Longobardian kings, given, according to an unauthenticated tradition, by pope Gregory the great to queen Theodolinda, and preserved till lately in the cathedral of Monza. Henry, in 1311, is the first German emperor who is known to have worn it. It was removed by the Austrians to Vienna after 1859, but was presented to the king of Italy in 1866. The outer part of the crown consists of a golden hoop, with enameled flowers and precious stones, in form like an ancient diadem, within which is a thin plate or fillet of iron, which is declared by a tradition long opposed by the church at Milan, but adopted by the congregation "dei sacri riti” at Rome, to have been hammered from one of the nails of the true cross. When Napoleon I. was elected king of Italy in 1805, he took this relic and crowned himself with it, disdaining to receive it from the hands of a bishop; and at the same time he founded an order of knighthood, taking its name from the iron crown. The orderforgotten after the fall of Napoleon-was restored and remodeled in 1816 by the emperor Francis I., who gave it the name of the Austrian order of the iron crown.

IRON MASK, THE MAN WITH THE. The story of the prisoner so called, confined in the Bastile and other prisons in the reign of Louis XIV., has long kept up a romantic interest. The first notice of him was given in a work entitled Mémoires Secrets pour servir à l'Histoire de Perse (Amst. 1745-46). According to this writer, he was the duke of Vermandois, a natural son of Louis XIV. and De la Vallière, who, having given a box on the ear to his half-brother, the grand dauphin, had to expiate it with imprisonment for life. The assertion was without foundation, for the duke of Vermandois died in camp in 1683; but the confidence with which it was made caused a deep sensation, and the romance of Mouhy, L'Homme au Masque de Fer, which immediately followed (Hague, 1746), was read with all the more avidity that it was prohibited. Voltaire, in his Siecle de Louis XIV., treats the anecdote historically. According to him, the prisoner was young, and of a noble figure. In journeying from one prison to another, he wore a mask, and was at last transferred to the Bastile, where he was treated with great distinction; and so on.

The first authentic information with regard to the iron mask was given by the Jesuit Griffet, who acted for nine years as confessor in the Bastile, in his Traité des differentes Sortes de Preuves qui servent à établir la Vérité dans l'Histoire (Liège, 1769). He brought forward the MS. journal of Dujonca, the lieut. of the Bastile, according to which SaintMars arrived, on Sept. 18, 1698, from the isle de Sainte-Marguerite, bringing with him in a litter a prisoner whom he had already had in custody at Pignerol. The prisoner's name was not mentioned, and his face was always kept concealed by a mask of black velvet. The journal mentions his death on Nov. 19, 1703, and that he was buried in the cemetery of St. Paul. This is confirmed by the register of burials for the parish of St. Paul's, where the prisoner is mentioned under the name of Marchiali.

After long silence Voltaire returned to the subject in his Essai sur les Meurs, but he brought forward nothing new. In the seventh edition of the Dictionnaire Philosophique he related the story anew, under the head Anna, corrected his errors as to time from the journal of Dujonca, and concluded with the assurance that he knew more about the matter than Griffet, but chose, as a Frenchman, to be silent. An addition to the article, apparently by the editor of the work, freely states the opinion that the mask was an elder brother of Louis XIV. The writer makes Anne of Austria to have had this son by a favorite, and being thus undeceived as to her supposed barrenness, to have brought about a meeting with her husband, and in consequence bore Louis XIV. Louis is held to have first learned the existence of this brother when he came of age, and to have put him in confinement, to guard against any possible unpleasant consequences. Linguet, in the Bastille Dévoilée (The Bastile Exposed"), ascribes this paternity to the duke of Buckingham. Saint-Michel published a book in 1790, in which he relates the story of the unfortunate being, and points to a secret marriage between queen Anne and cardinal Mazarin. What is remarkable is that the court continued to manifest an interest in the matter, and took every means to keep the identity of the prisoner in the dark. When the Bastile fell the prisoner's room was eagerly searched, and also the prison register; but all inquiry was vain. The abbé Soulavie, who published Mémoires de Maréchal Richelieu (Lond, and Par. 1790), tries to make out from a document written by the tutor of that unfortunate prince that the iron mask was a twin-brother of Louis XIV. A prophecy had announced disaster to the royal family from a double birth, and to avoid this, Louis XIII. had caused the last born of the twins to be brought up in secret. Louis XIV. learned of his brother's existence only after the death of Mazarin, and that brother having discovered his relation to the king by means of a portrait, was subjected to perpetual imprisonment. This view of the matter was that almost universally prevalent till the time of the revolution. It is also followed in Zschokke's German tragedy, and in Fournier's drama, founded on the story.

The first conjecture of what till recently seemed to be the truth is contained in a letter dated 1770, written by a baron d'Heiss to the Journal Encyclopédique. The same is repeated by Louis Dutens in his Intercepted Correspondence (1789), who declares that there is no point of history better established than the fact that the prisoner with the iron mask was a minister of the duke of Mantua. This minister, count Matthioli, had pledged himself to Louis XIV. to urge his master the duke to deliver up to the French

Irony.

the fortress of Casale, which gave access to the whole of Lombardy. Though largely bribed to maintain the French interests he began to betray them; and Louis XIV., having got conclusive proofs of the treachery, contrived to have Matthioli lured to the French frontier, secretly arrested, April 23, 1679, and conveyed to the fortress of Pignerol, which was his first prison. The conclusion of D'Heiss and Dutens, that Matthioli was the iron mask, though acute, was only a conjecture. But the documents since discovered and published by M. Roux-Fazillac in his Recerches historiques et critiques sur l'Homme au Masque de Fer (Par. 1800), by M. Delort in his Histoire de Homme au Masque de Fer (Par. 1825), and M. Marius Topin in his Man with the Iron Mask (1869), seemed to leave little doubt on the subject, and the public had apparently made up its mind that the secret was at last discovered; but a still more recent work by a French officer, M. Th. Iung. La Vérité sur le Masque de Fer (Les Empoisonneurs) d'après des Documents inédits des Archives de la Guerre et autres dépôts publics, 1664-1703 (Par. 1873), has conclusively shown that Matthioli could not have been the mysterious prisoner, and endeavors to prove-we would almost venture to say, succeeds in proving— that the man in the iron mask was the unknown head of a wide-spread and formidable conspiracy, working in secret for the assassination of Louis XIV. and some of his ablest ministers. The severity of M. Iung's labors with reference to this subject will be understood when it is stated that in the course of his researches he had to examine some 1700 volumes of dispatches and reports in the bureau of the ministry of war.

I'RON-MONGERY, a term applied to the small manufactures of iron or hardware kept for general sale in shops.

IRON MOUNTAIN, a famous deposit of iron ore in Washington co., Mo.. 40 m. 8. w. of St. Genevieve, on the Mississippi, and connected with St. Louis by railroad. The ore is rich and pure. It is magnetic, having distinct polarity, and in some places acts strongly on the needle. The main body of the ore has a thickness of 50 ft.; its depth is unknown, but the amount is immense. In 1871 262,477 tons, and in 1872 371,474 tons were shipped by the Iron Mountain company. The deposit has been fully described by Dr. Litton in the second annual report of the geological survey of Missouri, 1855, and by prof. Raphael Pumpelly and Dr. Adolph Schmidt.

IRONS, otherwise called BILBOES, are shackles of iron into which the ankles of a prisoner are fixed, and which slide on a long iron bar. Refractory sailors and soldiers, who evince violent behavior, and become unmanageable, are commonly put in irons, several being placed side by side along the same bar. In cases of extreme violence the wrists may be similarly treated, but instances of this latter punishment are rare. The punishment of “putting in irons" is more common in the navy than in the army.

IRONS, WILLIAM JOSIAH, b. England, 1812; graduated at Oxford; was made prebendary of St. Paul's, London, 1860; and chosen Bampton lecturer, 1870. He is the author of several valuable theological treatises.

IRONTON, a city of Lawrence co., Ohio, on the Ohio river, 142 m. above Cincinnati and 100 s.e. of Columbus; pop. '70, 5,686. It is on a plain at the base of lofty hills, which contain iron ore and bituminous coal. It is the terminus of the Iron railroad, 13 m. long. It has 10 churches, 2 national banks, a high school, 5 weekly newspapers, a large number of furnaces, rolling-mills, iron-foundries, and machine-shops. The chief article of export is iron, the iron trade amounting to $7,000,000 a year. The city is lighted with gas, and furnished with water by the Holly works.

IRONWOOD, a name bestowed in different countries on the timber of different trees, on account of its great hardness and heaviness.-Metrosideros vera belongs to the natural order myrtacea, and is a native of Java and other eastern islands. It has ovato-lanceolate, shortly stalked, smooth, sharp-pointed leaves; and axillary, many-flowered, stalked cymes. Its wood is much valued by the Chinese and Japanese for making rudders, etc., and is imported into Britain in small quantities under the name of ironwood. The bark is used in Japan as a remedy for diarrhea and mucous discharges -Mesua ferrea, a tree of the natural order guttifera, is a native of the East Indies, and is planted near Buddhist temples for the sake of its fragrant flowers, with which the images of Buddha are decorated. The flowers resemble small white roses, and contrast singularly with the deep crimson buds and shoots. The timber, known as ironwood, is very hard, as is that of M. speciosa, another tree of the same genus and region.-The wood of repris undulata, of the order diosmacea, is called white ironwood at the cape of Good Hope. It is very hard and tough, and is chiefly used for axles, plows, and other agricultural implements. -The wood of olea laurifolia, a species of olive, is called black ironwood in the same country, and is used for the same purposes, and for furniture.

IRONY (Gr. eirōneia, from eirōn, a dissembler) is the name given to that peculiar style of thought and expression by which words are made to convey a meaning exactly opposed to their literal sense. When skillfully used irony is one of the most crushing and irresistible figures of rhetoric. Instances will readily occur to every reader of history and literature. One of the most celebrated is that recorded in Scripture, where Elijah taunts the discomfited priests of Baal on Mount Carmel. The great master of irony in ancient times was Socrates, who, as has been happily said, raised it to the dignity of a philosophic method.