The Belgians are very expert at this sort of ornamental work. The very minute Damascus figure they frequently produce, is admirable, if beauty alone were the advantage sought in a gun barrel. They use thirty-two alternate bars of steel and iron, and roll them into a sheet of 3-16ths thick, and then slit them by a machine into square rods; these are twisted in the way just described, but to such an extreme as to resemble the threads of a very fine screw: six of them are welded into one, instead of three as with us. The figure is so extremely fine as to appear not to be larger than the finest needle. I have seen barrels made in Liege, superior in minute figure to any real Damascus barrel, or sword either. Our workmen here say the steel is better; which I am inclined to think is true: it is a branch of the gun manufacture they have long excelled in. The very best “Damascene” workers are to be found at La Chafontaine, a few miles from Liege, where they dwell in as beautiful a dell as fancy could wish, with a powerful hill-stream working their boring and grinding-mills, thus enabling them to send their barrels into Liege, ready for the filer. I have spent considerable time, and taken great trouble, to produce in Birmingham iron equally good; and I have succeeded: but, unfortunately, Englishmen are so extravagant in their ideas of value, as to render the constant manufacture of this iron here, a losing speculation. It can, however, be obtained from Belgium now, under the amended tariff, at ten per cent. on the value. It can be purchased there, ready for barrel making, at a franc per pound; and cheap it is at that price: two and a half francs would not purchase it here. That Damascus iron is incompatible with goodness, I can and shall clearly prove. Experiment with the testing machine shows a rod of wire-twist 3-8ths square, containing 1·6875 solid inches, as equal to a tension of 11,200 lbs.; whereas a rod, when converted into Damascus of 11-16ths of an inch in breadth, by 4-16ths in thickness, containing 2·625 solid inches, was only equal to 8,960 lbs.; thus showing a clear loss of full thirty-five per cent. And when welded into barrels of the dimensions described, the relative internal strength of each is 5,019-1/2 lbs., and 3,292 lbs. _to the inch of tube_. This constitutes a great difference. But unfortunately that is not all.