We can only conjecture how the art of smelting iron was discovered. Who first applied fire to the ore, and made it plastic; who discovered fire itself, and its uses in metallurgy? No one can tell. Tradition says that the metal was discovered through the accidental burning of a wood in Greece. Mr. Mushet thinks it more probable that the discovery was made on the conversion of wood into charcoal for culinary or chamber purposes. "If a mass of ore," he says, "accidentally dropped into the middle of the burning pile during a period of neglect, or during the existence of a thorough draught, a mixed mass, partly earthy and partly metallic, would be obtained, possessing ductility and extension under pressure. But if the conjecture is pushed still further, and we suppose that the ore was not an oxide, but rich in iron, magnetic or spicular, the result would in all probability be a mass of perfectly malleable iron. I have seen this fact illustrated in the roasting of a species of iron-stone, which was united with a considerable mass of bituminous matter. After a high temperature had been excited in the interior of the pile, plates of malleable iron of a tough and flexible nature were formed, and under circumstances where there was no fuel but that furnished by the ore itself." [9] The metal once discovered, many attempts would be made to give to that which had been the effect of accident a more unerring result. The smelting of ore in an open heap of wood or charcoal being found tedious and wasteful, as well as uncertain, would naturally lead to the invention of a furnace; with the object of keeping the ore surrounded as much as possible with fuel while the process of conversion into iron was going forward. The low conical furnaces employed at this day by some of the tribes of Central and Southern Africa, are perhaps very much the same in character as those adopted by the early tribes of all countries where iron was first made. Small openings at the lower end of the cone to admit the air, and a larger orifice at the top, would, with charcoal, be sufficient to produce the requisite degree of heat for the reduction of the ore. To this the foot-blast was added, as still used in Ceylon and in India; and afterwards the water-blast, as employed in Spain (where it is known as the Catalan forge), along the coasts of the Mediterranean, and in some parts of America.