From time immemorial the manufacture of iron and steel has been followed in Germany, and that country yet retains pre-eminence in this art both as to mechanical and chemical processes. It was in the eighteenth century that the celebrated Freiberg Mining Academy was founded, the oldest of all existing mining schools; and based on developing mining and metallurgy on scientific lines, it has stood always on the battle line in the fight of progress. The early smelting furnaces of Germany resembled the Catalan, and were called the “Stückofen,” and in Sweden were known as the “Osmund.” In these very pure iron was made. The art of making cast iron, which differs from the ordinary smelted iron in the fact that it is _melted_ and then run into moulds, although known among the ancients more than forty centuries ago, as shown by the castings of bronze and brass described by their writers and recovered from their ruins, appears to have been forgotten long before the darkness of the middle ages gathered. There is no record of its practice from the time the elder Pliny described its former use (40-79 A. D.), to the sixteenth century. It is stated that then the lost art was re-invented by Ralph Page and Peter Baude of England in 1543--who in that year made cast-iron in Sussex. The “Stückofen” furnace above referred to was succeeded in Germany by higher ones called the “Flossofen,” and these were followed by still higher and larger ones called “Blauofen,” so that by the middle of the eighteenth century the furnaces were very capacious, the blast was good, and it had been learned how to supply the furnaces with ore, coal and lime-stone broken into small fragments. The lime was added as a flux, and acted to unite with itself the sand, clay and other impurities to form a slag or scoria. The melted purified iron falling to the bottom was drawn off through a hole tapped in the furnace, and the molten metal ran into channels in a bed of sand called the “Sow and pigs.” Hence the name, “pig iron.” The smelting of ore by charcoal in those places where carried on extensively required the use of a vast amount of wood, and denuded the surrounding lands of forests. So great was this loss felt that it gave rise to the prohibitory laws and the decadence in England of the manufacture of iron, already alluded to. This turned the attention of iron smelters to coal as a substitute. Patents were granted in England for its use to several unsuccessful inventors. Finally in 1619 Dud Dudley, a graduate of Oxford University, and to whom succeeded his father’s iron furnaces in Worcestershire, obtained a patent and succeeded in producing several tons of iron per week by the use of the pitcoal in a small blast furnace. This success inflamed the wood owners and the charcoal burners and they destroyed Dudley’s works. He met with other disasters common to worthy inventors and discontinued his efforts to improve the art.