Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1890 edition. Excerpt: ... The Madeley Wood Works. William Eeynolds having at his death left a share in the Madeley Wood works to his nephew, William Anstice (father of the present William Eeynolds Anstice) whom he also appointed one of his executors, and by whom, in partnership with William Reynolds's surviving son, the late Joseph Eeynolds, the works were carried on until the decease of Mr. Anstice in the year 1850. Mr. Anstice was a young man, not more than twenty-one, when he succeeded to the management of these works, and although he possessed little practical knowledge gained in connection with this branch of industry, he possessed a mind well stored with knowledge. He was a fair amateur chemist of the school of Dr. Black and his contemporaries, under whom Mr. Eeynolds had previously studied, and the friend of the tale Sir Humphrey Davy, then a young man, with whom he spent some time with Dr. Beddows, at one time of Shifnal, but then of Bristol, assisting him in a course of experiments he was conducting on pneumatic chemistry and galvanism. He was also a fair amateur geologist, and his early studies led him, on succeeding to the management of the works, to observe, and to apply his knowledge to account. The old hearths and "bears," as accumulations in the blast-furnaces were called, on occasions of renewal, were carefully scrutinized and searched by him for metallic substances and salts not usually known to exist in iron-ores; and we remember him giving us some remarkably fine cubes of titanium, taken from one he had had blown to pieces, He inherited the yery fine collection of fossils Mr. Eeynolds had collected, and added thereto by encouraging his men to bring anything they found of a rare character in the clay ironstones. Sir E. Murchison, Mr. Buckland, and...
