Like all other proposed uses of brown coal, that in connection with the smelting of iron ores has been the subject of long and careful experiment, and while it has not been found possible to entirely supplant the use of bituminous coal or coke with brown coal, it has been clearly proven by actual operations on a commercial basis, which have extended over a number of years, that it is both possible and profitable to employ brown coal as a part of the fuel used in such work.

The experiments have been directed both toward the production of a coke from brown coal which would be serviceable in the iron furnace, and to the use in the furnace of the raw brown coal itself.

The first of these proceeded on the understanding that if a coke could be produced from brown coal containing no greater amount of ash than that of the stone coal, of sufficient hardness to support the furnace burden, and in large enough particles and porous enough to permit the proper passage of the blast and gases, there would be no difference, practically, in smelting iron with the two.

The other experiments are based on the experience gained in smelting ores with raw bituminous coal, and have proved very successful.

Many attempts have been made to secure a good coke from brown coal, but so far it has not been found practicable to produce coke of sufficient size and low enough in price to render it available for this use. Ordinary brown coal when submitted to the coking process comes from the oven as a powdery coke, few fragments being over a quarter of an inch in diameter. Some of the lignitic varieties, however, can be charred, and yield a kind of charcoal which is suitable for the blast furnace, and are so used.

Prof. Kupelwieser, of the Mining Academy of Leoben, who has given the subject much attention, and who, by his experiments and his acquaintance with those of others working to the same end, is most capable of