Lii.
lx., and Specul. Doctrinale, XV. ch. lxiii.) The latter author writes
Alidena, and I have not been able to refer to Avicenna, so that I am
doubtful whether his Andena is the same term with the Andaine of
Pauthier and our Ondanique.
The popular view, at least in the Middle Ages, seems to have regarded
Steel as a distinct natural species, the product of a necessarily
different ore, from iron; and some such view is, I suspect, still common
in the East. An old Indian officer told me of the reply of a native friend
to whom he had tried to explain the conversion of iron into steel - "What!
You would have me believe that if I put an ass into the furnace it will
come forth a horse." And Indian Steel again seems to have been regarded as
a distinct natural species from ordinary steel. It is in fact made by a
peculiar but simple process, by which the iron is converted directly
into cast-steel, without passing through any intermediate stage analogous
to that of blister-steel. When specimens were first examined in England,
chemists concluded that the steel was made direct from the ore. The
Ondanique of Marco no doubt was a fine steel resembling the Indian
article. (Mueller's Ctesias, p. 80; Curtius, IX. 24; Mueller's Geog.
Gr. Min. I. 262; Digest. Novum, Lugd. 1551, Lib. XXXIX. Tit. 4;
Salmas. Ex. Plinian. II. 763; Edrisi, I. 65-66; J. R. S. A. A. 387
seqq.; Hamasae Carmina, I. 526; Elliot, II.
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