The patentees of this manufacture (Messrs. J. Martineau, jun. and W. H. Smith,) specify their object to be the preparation of an alloy of steel, having that peculiar wavy appearance exhibited in the Damascus sword blades, and likewise for producing their toughness and elasticity of temper. The process of preparing the alloy is thus described: zinc 80 parts, purified nickel 16 parts, silver 4 parts = 100 parts. These are put into a black lead crucible, and covered with charcoal; the lid is then luted down to prevent evaporation, and exposed to the heat of an ordinary steel furnace, until the metals are fused, when the alloy is poured out into cold water, to suddenly cool it, which renders it so brittle, that it is easily reduced afterwards, by a pestle and mortar, to powder, which the patentees call meteor powder, and is incorporated with the steel, together with other mixtures, in the manner following: 281bs. of common blistered steel, 10 oz. of meteor powder, 7 oz. of powdered chromate of iron, 1 oz. of charcoal, 2 oz. of quick-lime, and 3 oz. of porcelain clay, are put together in a crucible, and fused in a cast-steel furnace.

After casting, this alloy is to be drawn out, under a hammer, into bars, when it will be found to exhibit the damask wavy appearance on its surface.

To bring out the damask more fully upon any article made of this alloy, the surface is to be polished, and then washed over with nitric acid, diluted with nineteen times its weight of water. It could hardly have been supposed by the patentees that such a variety of substances was necessary to producing the damask pattern upon steel; the nickel and the chromium were probably introduced by them with the view of imitating those natural phenomona called meteoric stones, in which it is said one or both of these metals are constantly found: and as two or three of the other ingredients of this patent steel mixture may be regarded as fluxes, it is not quite so whimsical a compound as it might at first appear, especially as it was introduced at a time when the public taste for steel-extraordinary was so much excited.