It is difficult to imagine what would have been the state of the iron industry in this country if we had been called upon to supply our full proportion of the enormously increased demand for iron. To meet that proportion, the British production of pig iron should have been close on 11,000,000 tons in 1882, a drain on our mineral resources which cannot be replaced, and which, especially if continued in the same ratio, would have been anything but desirable. Fortunately, as I am disposed to think, other countries have contributed more than a proportionate amount to the increase in the world's demand; and, paradoxical as it may appear, it is possible that, to this country at least, the encouragement given by protective duties to the production of iron abroad may have been a blessing in disguise. PROGRESS OF BESSEMER STEEL. To speak of the enormous increase in the production of steel by the introduction of the Bessemer process has become a commonplace on occasions like the present, and yet I doubt whether its real dimensions are generally known or remembered. In 1869 the manufacture of Bessemer steel had already acquired what was then looked upon as a considerable development in all the principal centers of metallurgical industry, except the United States, but including our own country, Germany, France, and Austria, and the world's production in that year was 400,000 tons. Last year it was over 5,000,000 tons, and it has doubled in every steel-producing country during the last four years, except in France, where, during this latter period, the increase has not been much more than one-fourth. What is almost as remarkable as the enormous increase in the production of Bessemer steel is the great diminution in its cost. In the years preceding 1875, the price of rails manufactured from Bessemer ingots fluctuated between L10 and L18 per ton, and I remember Lord George Hamilton when he was Under-Secretary for India of Lord Beaconsfield's administration in 1875 or 1876, congratulating himself on his good fortune in having been able to secure a quantity of steel rails for the Indian government at L13 per ton. Within the last three years we have seen them sold under L4 10s. in this country, and L5 10s. in Germany and Belgium. LATEST IMPROVEMENTS IN IRON MAKING.