With respect to the mode now in use of reducing the mine ore, there is preserved so explicit an account, from the pen of Dr. Parsons, the county antiquary and naturalist of that age, as to call for its verbatim insertion here:-- "The ore and cinder, wherewith they make their iron (which is the great employment of the poorer sort of inhabitants), 'tis dug in most parts of the Forest, one in the bowells, and the other towards the surface of the earth. "There are two sorts of ore: the best ore is your Brush ore, of blewish colour, very ponderous, and full of shiny specks, like grains of silver; this affordeth the greatest quantity of iron, but being melted alone, produceth a metal very short and brittle. To remedy this inconvenience, they make use of another material, which they call cinder, it being nothing else but the refuse of the ore, after the melting hath been extracted, which, being melted with the other in due quantity, gives it that excellent temper of toughness for which this iron is preferred before any other that is brought from foreign parts. "After they have provided their ore, their first work is to calcine it, which is done in kilns, much after the fashion of our ordinary lime kilns; these they fill up to the top with coal and ore untill it be full, and so, putting fire to the bottom, they let it burn till the coal be wasted, and then renew the kilnes with fresh ore and coal. This is done without any infusion of mettal, and serves to consume the more drossy part of the ore, and to make it fryable, supplying the beating and washing, which are to no other mettals; from hence they carry it to their furnaces, which are built of brick and stone, about 24 foot square on the outside, and near 30 foot in hight within, and not above 8 or 10 foot over where it is widest, which is about the middle, the top and bottom having a narrow compass, much like the form of an egg. Behind the furnace are placed two high pair of bellows, whose noses meet at a little hole near the bottom: these are compressed together by certain buttons placed on the axis of a very large wheel, which is turned round by water, in the manner of an over-shot mill. As soon as these buttons are slid off, the bellows are raised again by a counterpoise of weights, whereby they are made to play alternately, the one giving its blast whilst the other is rising.