And the 3rd is that which is called ANDENA.  This is less known among the Latin nations.  Its special character is that like silver it is malleable and ductile under a very low degree of heat.  In other properties it is intermediate between iron and steel.” (Fr. R. Baconis Opera Inedita, 1859, pp. 382-383.) The same passage, apparently, of Avicenna is quoted by Vincent of Beauvais, but with considerable differences. (See Speculum Naturale, VII. ch. 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. 209, 394; Reynolds’s Utbi, p. 216.)

[Illustration:  Texture, with Animals, etc., from a Cashmere Scarf in the Indian Museum.

“De deverses maineres labores a bestes et ausiaus mout richement.”]

NOTE 4.—­Paulus Jovius in the 16th century says, I know not on what authority, that Kerman was then celebrated for the fine temper of its steel in scimitars and lance-points.  These were eagerly bought at high prices by the Turks, and their quality was such that one blow of a Kerman sabre would cleave an European helmet without turning the edge.  And I see that the phrase, “Kermani blade” is used in poetry by Marco’s contemporary Amir Khusru of Delhi. (P.  Jov.  Hist. of his own Time, Bk.  XIV.; Elliot, III. 537.)